Why was Boise State underplayed?
The Fresno Bee's performance with the Jan. 2 sports page was in a word pathetic. The amount of line and picture coverage given to the Boise State game shows your paper' s inability to adapt to a game that became headline national news.I ask you: Why would The Bee dominate the front page with an article titled "Glimpse of greatness." This is not a Stanford or Arizona town, the article was not even about a WAC or Fresno State girls basketball team. So why was the horrible decision made to have it take up in its entirety over half a page in a paper that should have been a front page dedicated/dominated by football?
The Broncos game may not have started as the top game of the season, but it definitely ended that way. Remember Boise is a WAC team and this is a WAC town.
Regards,
Jim Nau
First and foremost, we are a local newspaper. There are a growing number of other sources for readers to get information about national and international events. Our focus, therefore, has been -- and will remain -- on local sports. The centerpiece story and display on Stanford's Candice Wiggins was relevant to our readers because one of the best women's college basketball players in the country was coming to the Save Mart Center that day. This is a unique story that only The Bee would have.
The Boise State game had a connection because the Broncos are in the Western Athletic Conference, a connection we thoroughly covered in a Dec. 27 story about the Boise State football program. That is also why the game story was played at the top of the page with a picture.
Additionally, there were deadline issues to consider. The first story moved on the Associated Press wire at 10 p.m., giving us a very small window in which to reconfigure the cover of the sports section.
