Yakima Herald-Republic front page and screen grab of yakimaherald.com/sports.
Yakima Herald-Republic front page and screen grab of yakimaherald.com/sports.
Sports are incredibly diverse and so, too, are those who follow them. Some want to scan daily scores and highlights while others prefer a deeper dive.
Many want both.
At the Yakima Herald-Republic, our corner of the newsroom tries to provide as much as possible for all types of readers, some of whom have been with us a very long time and are entrenched in their routines. Doorstep, coffee, paper. Repeat.
The time has come, however, for us to adopt a dual personality and it’s critical to understand why that is and what it means.
As you have read or heard already, the Herald-Republic is transitioning to three print editions a week — Wednesday, Friday and Sunday — while still focusing our daily efforts on the freshly redesigned YH-R website and providing an eEdition every day. This transition will begin Friday.
These print editions will be heavy with local content and anchored by things you’re familiar with — Luke Thompson’s outdoors features on Wednesday and my Valley Varsity prep page on Friday. We will use Sunday’s larger section to go more in-depth on a variety of issues and topics while tapping into regional features, analysis and previews for coming events.
Your first look at Friday’s print edition this week — and then again on Sunday — will reveal where we’re headed, pushing forward all the local coverage we can while looking back and forward. To get the full flow of sports news on non-print days, and all days for that matter, I hope you will be a part of our growing digital readership with the website and eEditions — complete access to which comes with your print subscription.
To borrow heavily from March Madness, this is how we survive and advance. I know it won’t be easy, especially for those who aren’t digitally inclined. But starting this week, this is how we advance and we can do it while preserving all the extensive local coverage we’ve delivered in the past.
Looking through this week’s Friday and Sunday print editions you may say, ‘OK, the local features are great and the columns and previews are fine, but where are yesterday’s scores?’ Indeed, this is the aforementioned dual personality that is important for a sports reader to understand. The print editions will go to press in the afternoon, before most of the previous day’s sporting events have concluded or even started. That is why these editions will be geared toward the deeper-dive folks.
For all of the day-to-day coverage, whether it’s who scored two goals in a local prep soccer match or who homered for the Mariners, our efforts will continue unabated with breaking content on the website and include all the day’s news in the eEdition, which will be available digitally in the familiar print format early every morning. On print days, we will be remaking portions of the section in the eEdition to reflect the freshest news.
What’s more, these eEditions will also include the entire Seattle Times sports section, which will include an even broader look at each day’s scores and highlights from all the pro leagues.
For those unable to access our digital content, we will include a Valley Review roundup in each print edition with local college and prep headlines since the previous edition. We’ll do the same with box scores in the scoreboard for regional pro teams such as the Mariners, Kraken and Storm. Our print scoreboards will include a local schedule and TV-radio listing for all the days until the next print edition.
It’s a lot to process — believe me, I get that. You were patient with our adjustment to an earlier deadline last summer, and I hope with this transition you’ll come to see that we’re still here and still covering Valley sports to an extent no one else does.
In many ways, a transition like this impacts a sports section and its readers more than anybody. But we’ll still be shining a bright light on the Valley’s incredibly diverse sports scene. The only change, really, is how that light reaches you.
Reach Scott Spruill at sspruill@yakimaherald.com.
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