The Mailbox
Mr. White: Call me skeptical upon The Dispatch telling its readers last month that changes to the paper would include increased coverage of local high school and non-OSU college teams in its sports pages. While you have proven me wrong on the high school front (congratulations to newcomer Bailey Johnson), the amount of coverage for Capital, Otterbein, The Ohio University, et al, remains the same as the previous several years. As in a barren wasteland. While The Dispatch reports on the all-important decisions OSU coach Ryan Day has to make about his facial hair, the paper has provided no coverage of Ohio starting its first season in 16 years under a new coach. While the Dispatch has printed 127 articles about OSU’s quarterback battle since Justin Fields played his last game in January, fans of any other Ohio college team outside of the I-270 outerbelt are left with zero inches of copy to enjoy.
And don’t get me started on how your new deadline means your pages are full of articles bereft of timely reporting. It is with this knowledge, after all, that I’m emailing this letter to you on Wednesday, hoping it arrives in time to make your Sunday edition deadline.
Steve Burkley, Newark
Skeptical, er, Steve: Thanks for emailing your thoughts, which through the wonders of technology I received that very same day. Thanks also for recognizing the work of Bailey, as she’s been a great addition to our Dispatch family. I know she didn’t expect the curveball that the mysterious Bishop Sycamore threw her last week, but she handled it wonderfully. She’ll have difficulty matching a tale like that in her blossoming career. On the local colleges, I hear you, am forming a plan and hope to prove you wrong to some extent again. As for the beard, well, the popularity of that story on Dispatch.com was strangely off the charts and has us monitoring his grooming habits regularly.
Editor: Thanks for your thoughtful responses in today’s Dispatch. I saw a reader posed question that you did not respond to — or at the least I did not see it if you did. The reader asked if it would be possible to use a later deadline for the online version compared to the print version. It would allow you to include some of the Dispatch.com content in the electronic version of the paper.
This seems like a fantastic idea to me. I enjoy the format of the electronic version — both on my iPhone and my Kindle. I would prefer to use those compared to using the Dispatch.com version. I am a longtime subscriber of close to 35 years. Recently I canceled the print version. As stated earlier, I have come to appreciate the electronic app versions of the Dispatch. Well, at least the format is something I enjoy. The outdated content is my issue. I don’t enjoy the move to human interest stories, commentary and two-day-old news. I hope you can make the deadline for the (electronic) versions later in the evening, after the nights games have completed.
Mike Vaughan
Mike: As a longtime fan of the newspaper format, I, too, enjoy looking at the e-edition when I’m out of town and can’t have the print version. But creating another edition for later in the day would require extensive staffing and wouldn’t match the immediacy and timeliness of Dispatch.com in its current format. As it is now, the latest news is always available as writers file their reports, no matter the time of day. Just Thursday night, for example, even though the Ohio State-Minnesota football game was not going to be in Friday’s print edition, we had a live blog and in-game developments during play, and by 3 a.m. Friday we had 10 articles, a photo gallery and several videos posted on the site. Even if we had a print edition or an e-edition, that many items would not have made it in the publication. I encourage you to sample the depth we can provide online.
Have more comments, questions? Reach out to me at bwhite1@dispatch.com.
