Slusher: The formula for sports coverage is full of variables

The vagaries of news judgment prompt debate in every section of the newspaper, but perhaps nowhere do they stir indignant passions as in Sports.

Sox fans accuse us of tilting our coverage toward the Cubs. Cubs fans complain that we give too much space to the Sox. College basketball fans grumble whenever a Notre Dame or Northwestern or Illinois game fails to get the space they think it deserves. Golf fans feel left out, and followers of the Fire, the Cougars, the Wolves, the Boomers and the WNBA all clamor, understandably, for more attention - all while lovers of the more popular sports question why we give the smaller teams space that could go to their games.

And then there are the preps and youth sports. Even considering them in aggregate, some readers bemoan what they see as our concentration on the professional sports stage, and within the parameters of what we do devote to youth and high school teams, we get complaints ranging from people who think we're dismissing their favorite sport to those who are convinced we care only about the Big Three of boys football, basketball and baseball.

I received a call recently from a man who didn't understand why we give so much coverage to girls high school sports, and within the same week a letter from a woman angry that we had failed to "even mention the score" of a particular girls hockey game. In a curious twist, a very nice recent letter posited that we "might be surprised" to learn we had women readers among fans of our sports coverage.

But we aren't surprised. We know we do. And we know we have among our readers fans of the Wolves and the Sky and the Flames and of high school girls volleyball, boys wrestling, boys and girls tennis, soccer, softball, water polo and a seeming myriad other athletic activities.

(As a somewhat telling aside, I'll also direct you to Burt Constable's March 15 column about suburban cricket players who, to my knowledge, haven't complained about our lack of cricket coverage even though I don't think we've posted a single score from the Cricket World Cup being followed by some 2 billion people around the world.)

My ultimate point, though, is that we have no favorites. Our goal is to strike a careful balance that recognizes the breadth and diversity of interests across the sports spectrum while also appealing to those sports and games that attract the most interest. There is, unfortunately, no reliable formula for achieving this balance. If there were, it would likely figure in fan variables like number, gender, proximity and passion, but how they would be integrated with each other would change from day to day and from editor to editor.

In the words of Tom Quinlan, assistant managing editor for sports, "Beyond people just wanting 'more' of their favorite sport, I try to remember to ask 'what in particular do you want?' We're always in the market for good stories and good ideas that go beyond 'more.' "

At the beginning of this column, I used the word "vagaries" to describe the process, and it may not have been quite accurate. News judgment in sports, or elsewhere in the paper for that matter, isn't exactly random or unpredictable. On any given day, you might see evidence for any particular claim, depending on your personal biases and your expectations of us. But we hope that over the course of time, you find that our coverage is in fact broad and diverse and exciting, whatever your interest. (Though admittedly we'll have to work on that cricket thing.)

Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher.