Thinking outside the box (score)

It’s a common theme around newspapers these days — do more with less.

Less staffing ... more reponsibilities.

In one of our recent Press Brainstorming Sessions (PBS), one idea emerged that by eliminating something national — like box scores — that would create more room for local content.

Box scores have been around nearly since the advent of newspapers. But times have changed. Fans still want access to the info, but they have so many other avenues to find it — laptops, PCs, phones, tablets — though hopefully not while zooming down Ramsey on their way to work.

Let’s try it, and see what kind of feedback we get.

Ready, break!

OH, YOU noticed.

It wasn’t like the storming of the palace.

But the calls and emails began to trickle in.

“The box scores have been missing the past few days!!” one reader wrote. “Please resume putting them in the sports section as I am sure there are many more baseball fans than me that are very upset about this missing vital information.

Wrote another:

“Why no box scores? Only having the final score is like having just the last page of a good novel.”

Chimed in another reader:

“I am hoping that today something happened that there were no NBA, NHL or Major League box scores. That is without a doubt what I look forward to the most every day to look at and would be really disappointed if they were eliminated.”

(Gee, it’s not my pretty face ... ?)

Perhaps the most succinct suggestion came from a phone message left by a 13-year subscriber to The Press.

“Put the damn box scores back in,” the reader growled.

AFTER EXHAUSTIVE research (we got tired), we realized that although many of our readers can access box scores any number of ways other than by perusing the Scoreboard page, there are still a fair amount of readers — even members of fantasy leagues — who look forward to opening up the newspaper to find out how their players and teams did.

As I recall, there was a similar Press Brainstorming Session some 20 years ago, and the consensus was to run linescores instead of box scores, to save space.

Well, that went over as you might expect. Back then there wasn’t nearly as many different ways to find box scores, so that experiment was short-lived.

Same with this one.

So, as quietly as they disappeared from the paper, one week later, the baseball box scores reappeared.

“I was very pleased to open the sports section and find an “old friend,” a reader emailed. “I greatly hope that this traditional feature of American sports will continue on in your fine newspaper.”

It will. At least until the next Press Brainstorming Session.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.