Talkin' newspaper coverage, freshman and recruiting visits

Clay Kallam says high school sports coverage in the Northern California area is in danger, due to the consolidation of several small publications:

High school sports is the most labor-intensive activity in the sports department. (All local news coverage is more expensive that national coverage, which is supplied by wire services.) Not only does it require reporters, it requires photographers, people to take phone calls and the necessity of producing pages on deadline rather than at a steady pace through the shift.

Any manager looking to cut editorial costs ("editorial" is the department that produces the news sections) is going to look hard at high school sports coverage, as it's easy to suggest that only a small percentage of readers care about it since no one watches it on TV, at least compared to the NFL.

It's sad that the Bay is going the way of larger cities, where there is no high school sports coverage in major dailies. That art is left to small dailies, weeklies, and people like me. That's why I try to get out to as many games as possible each year, and it's why I always encourage the reading audience to send in a game report if you catch a great matchup. I'd love to increase the coverage in this space.

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It's a tedious time of year for college freshmen basketball players. I've been reading the tweets and Facebook postings of many of them over the last month, and they're trying to get a handle on the "grown and on your own" thing. They're homesick, stressed out about their schedules, don't know if they can handle some of their classes, and are getting used to pushing themselves along instead of relying on others.

Oklahoma Coach Sherri Coale calls it "being on the cliff," and she loves watching 18-year-olds go there.

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Tennessee's recruiting visit dance card has sure filled up for October. Among the visitors scheduled are Andraya Carter, Jordan Adams, Mercedes Russell and Rachel Hollivay, to hame a few. GoVolsExtra's take.