Follow Southern Illinois sports coverage on Twitter

Journalists at GateHouse Media newspapers in Southern Illinois are making it easier to follow local sports action on Twitter. A hashtag - #SILscores - is now commonly used to identify tweets related to our coverage of high school, college and recreational sports. In some instances game coverage is in real time.

The hashtag symbol followed by a word or phrase (uninterrupted by spaces) makes it easier to follow a topic in Twitter search.

Readers of our print and digital products are also encouraged to use #SILscores to report developments in area contests they attend as well.

Setting the record straight on Benton, Marion, West Frankfort sports coverage

Our three newspapers in Williamson and Franklin counties - the Daily American (West Frankfort), the Daily Republican (Marion) and the Benton Evening News - made a small change in how we went to press in early August that has been the subject of concern by a few people in one of those communities.

Here is what we did, why we did it and why those community newspapers (and their readers) are now much better off for the change.

We combined just the "B" section of all three papers on Aug. 6; it now has primarily a sports and classified focus. (See related story.) The perception from some observers has been that in order to do so, we must have cut back on sports coverage from their community as a result. That is simply not the reality:

• We freed journalist time to spend more time writing. Previously each sports editor at each paper spent roughly 35-50% of their week "paginating" the sports section. This is the process where the pages are composed using a computer design program and then transmitted to a printer. So in any given week we lost up to a collective 50 hours or more of time between the three newspapers to a production process that could be spent reporting. Under the new system, we moved pagination of the sports section to another individual in the newsroom, freeing all three journalists to write more. 
• We devoted more space to sports journalism. In the past, some days we published as few as two pages of sports coverage; we now have up to four or even five pages. That is a larger sports section that at some newspapers 10 times the circulation of ours. 
• We increased the audience for our classified advertisers. Now every advertiser in that section has a larger audience. As a result, we have seen the number of participants in our business services directory grow.
• Our expanded coverage increased the value of the sports section for some of our readers. Many readers have nieces, nephews, grandchildren and children of friends playing sports at neighboring schools. Some are alumni of those schools. They have told us they appreciate the ability to follow those athletes from nearby towns in our newspapers. Others have told us that following the coverage of schools who their local teams may play is helpful in familiarizing themselves with the competition. 
• And we saved some money to plow elsewhere in our operation. There were cost savings because our printer only had to create press plates for one section instead of three. The annual savings equates to the salary equivalent of an entry level staff member. 

Is the coverage everything we want it to be? No. The change was hampered by a staff resignation; there was a brief period of time we were not at full staff. The Southern Illinois Miners - fortunately - made it to the championship round of the playoffs for the first time, which took a little bit away from the coverage of scholastic sports. So we haven't hit our stride yet and the best is yet to come. 

To summarize: 

• We still have the same size sports staff in place. 
• At a minimum we are still covering the same athletic teams we have in the past. 
• Some days our coverage of your favorite teams is greater than before. 
• And we've layered in some additional coverage into your edition - stories that would have been still been written and published in a different newspaper if this combined sports section did not exist - that inform local student athletes and their fans about near-by competitors and engage readers who grew up in and / or know individuals in those communities. 

If you have sports story ideas in these communities you feel deserve coverage, please contact a local sports editor:

• Allen Parker, Benton Evening News, sports@bentoneveningnews.com 
• Ryan Stieg, Daily American, sports@dailyamericannews.com
• Justin Walker, Daily Republican, jwalker@dailyrepublicannews.com