FAIR COVERAGE - Beaumont Enterprise

[bwjr]

It's not just the newspapers.  Have you watched sports on our local televesion stations?  They seem more interested in reporting about Lamar Baseball, Astros, and the Wildcatters than they do about our area High School Sports.  Oh excuse me, except when it is football season.  Try being a softball fan...practically NO coverage at all...not even scores listed...refers you to the website instead!!!

[khscatsfan]

Everyone has a great point.....but its the same situation in every media.....take this site for example......unless there are people registered to this site from all schools in all the districts, only the schools we are personally associated with get coverage. (Don't get me wrong---I am not complaining about this website. I really appreciate this website and I am so glad to finally have a place to go to check out whats going on in our prospective districts---so keep up the good work).

I have always felt like the Bmt. paper covers the areas of interest of whomever may be reporting. This, of course is just my opinion, and we all know the old saying about opinions..............we all have one   ;D

As far as the television sports reports go....well...thats a "whole other ballgame"...they are usually waiting for someone to call a score in...so........................if you want your team score reported on the local news call it in yourself (and try to talk to a "real person" and not an answering machine).

Thanks again SETXSPORTS for all the added bonuses of this website. The more I type the more I realize how beneficial you guys are.

So......If you want recognition--speak up and speak out. Send in your own stories and photos. People are out there who will listen. You got my attention.  

[gdickert]

Perhaps I take my life in my own hands here ...

I used to be the sports editor at The Enterprise back in the early 2000s.

I replaced Joe Heiling after he had spent decades there after coming to Beaumont from the Houston Post.

Joe is a great guy and had his staff covering sports with a passion.

When new leadership came in at The Enteprise, the idea of covering "sports" changed. Joe was unceremoniously escorted into retirement and sports at The Enterprise changed forever.

At one point, a managing editor relegated Lamar men's basketball winning over LSU to page four while putting ballroom dancing on the front page of the section.

That's right ... I said "BALLROOM DANCING."

I was in Baton Rouge with now-sports editor Michael Peters covering Lamar that night.

When I got into the office the next morning, you can't imagine the phone messages and evil emails I had received ... and rightfully so, I thought.

Before I left The Enterprise, I hired Michael because I knew he understood what sports really is and how to best cover it.

Michael has taken the sports department back to a more game-oriented coverage standpoint. From having done that myself in the beginning of my tenure in sports, I can tell you that it's tough to cover everything all the time.

We covered 32 different schools during football season, and that number increased dramatically when you added boys and girls basketball with several non-football playing schools thrown in.

Our coverage area spanned from Anahuac and Barbers Hill (the coaches there always loved us because they said the Houston Chronicle didn't know they even existed), all the way up to Newton and West Sabine, west to Woodville and Chester and, at one point, east to Lake Charles.

While the coverage area has pretty much stayed the same over the years, the "suits" at corporate headquarters in New York saw fit to cut staff, keep salaries the same and minimize resources in general.

No matter how hard we tried to get everything covered -- at least with a linescore if not a story -- we had people call and complain that their school was not covered.

(If I had a dime for every time I was called a racist because I didn't cover one game or another, I'd be rich!)

I always felt bad that the information was not there, but always explained that it was a simple matter for coaches to call in the information.

Heck, we even accepted collect calls!

There was a time when editors were considering changing The Beaumont Enterprise to just The Enterprise in order to better convey the regional feel the paper was trying to achieve.

That idea was nixed based on the fear of losing readership and advertisers in Beaumont.

Regardless, as sports editor, I made sure that Beaumont schools were considered for coverage first, based mostly on the importance of the game and what other regional games were being played.

If PNG and Nederland were playing ANYTHING, we were there.

If West Brook and Central were playing ANYTHING, we were there.

Same thing for WOS-LCM, Jasper-Silsbee, TJ-Lincoln ... really any major showdown rivalry that would bring out the fans.

Lots of fans equal lots of readers the next day.

I think the Enterprise sports department is struggling even more today with a lack of staff to get everything covered.

We used to call every coach who was hosting a home game to let them know that we would be waiting for their call on Friday nights during football season or Tuesday and Friday nights during basketball and the spring sports season.

Invariably, half the home coaches wouldn't call because they lost.

I've got two clerks sitting there waiting for the phone to ring, having already called 30-some-odd coaches earlier that day, and we get 8 calls from home coaches who won or a few die-hard coaches who would call on the bus ride home, win or lose. (I never got to thank Coach Gordon Long in Lumberton who called me EVERY time I asked ... so, thanks!)

Perhaps The Enterprise once existed in this area as a true regional news product. But that day is over. They can't advertise that they are a true regional newspaper anymore.

The problem is, they'll keep crowing that story as long as they think they can pull an advertising dollar or two out of these smaller communities.

I'm at the Silsbee newspaper now and wouldn't go back to The Enterprise or a Hearst paper again to save my life.

The small-town community weeklies are where the real news is written and the only place it will exist on paper in 20 years.

If you guys are true fans of your hometown teams, then grab a quick linescore from your coach (or learn how to keep a book ... it makes the game more fun to watch!) and call The Enterprise and let them know how your team did.

They'll appreciate it and so will your kids.

[643]

So it was you that was the Sports editor when a I wrote of a "Hometown boy signs with the Rangers" Surley you remember as I just quoted the first line in my letter, surley you would have remembered my statement of "You seem to have no problem with covering the out of state guys with Lamar while a local boy who's parents and Grandparents were born and raised in the Golden Tri goes unnoticed" In '99' Someone close to me was drafted by the Yankees in the 11th, I tried to get something in the paper of this achievment, and the first I noticed was a few days later in the letters to the editor section 'Bouqeuts n Brickbats' While I'm sitting here writing this about HS boys baseball look at what the girls in ANY sports get. NOTHING.     

[besbolbenbedygud]

Some of the issue is not just about being coverd but how it's covered.......Here is an example......This year in the PA news West Brook had beat PNG and the artical was about how PN-G 'lost' to West Brook (that is how it was written) and that's how it should have been........Last football season in the Beaumont Enterprise West Brook beat Memorial and the article was about how PAM 'lost' to West Brook.  I had to close the paper because I thought it was the PA news..........Am I wrong but should it not have been written the other way around (how WB beat PAM) JMO!!

[tvc184]

[Guest tigersvoice]

Great post by Gary Dickert giving the background on the problems with newspaper sports coverage.  It's another "Show me the

money!" scenario; this time from the corporate angle. 

One thing for sure - we are certainly glad to have Gary in Silsbee

doing "His thing" at the Silsbee Bee.  Go TIGERS!

[wg88pitcher]

Hey gdickert, i don't understand why you try to reach out as far as you did in the region. From what I understand, Beaumont is the number one subsriber to the BEAUMONT enterprise, so why not cover Beaumont sports first, all beaumont sports, and then the leftover room to the out of towners. Not only does WB get robbed of coverage, but Ozen and Central as well. You should have changed the name of the paper to the enterprise, b/c right now it seems as though it should be called the region enterprise...except beaumont.

[Brujins44]

I agree with wg88, the West Brook baseball and softball teams have been sitting atop their districts for a while now and I have seem little to no comments made about this or the upcoming game with Sterling. However I have seen articles on PNG and Nederland practically every day in the Enterprise. Can someone explain this to me? I thought it was called the Beaumont Enterprise not the Nederland, PNG and sometimes Vidor and Lumberton Enterprise with a little bit of Beaumont mixed in

[Guest Pirate V Ball]

I get most of my news here.

[bigred75]

IF all you BMT people want coverage in the Enterprise then move to Port Neches or Nederland, and your problems will be solved................

[tvc184]

[gdickert]

During my days at the Enterprise, I made sure we covered Beaumont schools first.

But PNG and Nederland, then Orange County teams, deserved and demanded coverage of their teams too.

We were a regional paper and we tried to hold true to that responsibility.

When I was there, it was me, and assistant sports editor (Rush Wood) and several writers (Kenton Brooks, Brad McBride and several others who came and went).

We used stringers to cover the outlying areas ...

Honestly, Brad McBride was our MidCounty writer. There is enough interest in the two schools in MidCounty, as well as enough money in the economy there, that we dedicated a specific writer to the task of covering those schools.

There was also a matter of competition with Bob West and his crew over at the PA News. Honestly, we were never able to get in with MidCounty as well as Tom Halliburton, but he had quite a few years head start on us.

One surprising fact?

Guess which city has the greatest penetration as far as the Enterprise was concerned in the early 2000s?

It's Vidor.

By percentage, more people in Vidor took the paper than any other city we distributed to ... including Beaumont.

There was a 90-plus percent penetration in Vidor as far as I remember.

I'm at the Silsbee Bee now and we cover Silsbee first. There is seldom a Silsbee sporting event that doesn't get at least a write-up in the Bee.

We also cover Kountze, Lumberton and Evadale, but our franchise is Silsbee.

We make sure to take care of our hometown schools because the people who live and work here support their paper.

I've told this before to many people ... I've been at a lot of newspapers in this region. The Silsbee Bee is the only one I've worked at where people line up for the paper before it ever even arrives in the office.

I'm proud of my past and the knowledge I earned over the years ... even at The Enterprise.

But, I've never been more happy with a job than right here in Silsbee. I plan to be here for quite a while.

[PoppaBearstarr]

I don't think all of Beaumont gets noticed...Ozen gets a lot, more than any other school.

[wg88pitcher]

If the Enterprise is a regional paper, then change the name and quit claiming to represent Beaumont, because there is no way in heck that has or will ever happen.

[bigred75]

Anyone have some cheese............to go with all this (whining)................

[gdickert]

One last note from me ...

If you're unhappy with The Enterprise, then support your hometown paper.

Pretty much every little town around here has its own paper.

If you buy, subscribe and advertise, it helps the small paper staffs better do their job, and thereby offer better coverage of local issues.

The Enterprise is what it is ... you can only stretch a rubber band so far before it won't stretch anymore.

The Enterprise is stretched too far, has been for years.

But, if they stop trying to be a regional paper, you're going to wind up without any coverage at all, even sporadic ...

[besbolbenbedygud]

I think the original post mentioned LSU...........are we that streched?  I mean they already paly Saints games here over Dallas games (a whole other topic)........Shouldn't the rubber band be reverberated back this way by now?? 

I thinks too it's the sport........case in point.....West Brook is playing tonight for sole first place in 21-5a..........Football season (this late in the season) they would be on their second artical, about the game, with another one tomorrow showing the outcome. 

[homerunbetty]

KUDOS TO THE "SOUTHEAST TEXAS/SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA" ENTERPRISE.  I saw West Brook made the front page!  WHOOOO!!!!!!! :-*