Happy Monday, everyone.
Or, happy Tuesday, depending on how you are reading this.
If you’re reading this online at Columbian.com or 360preps.com, it’s Monday and you probably thought nothing of it.
However, if you’re one of our dedicated print subscribers (and by the way, we love our print subscribers), you’re reading this on Tuesday, and you might be wondering what happened to your Monday paper.
Last month, The Columbian announced it was discontinuing publication of its Monday print edition in a cost-cutting move.
For many of us who work at The Columbian, the announcement came less as a surprise and more like an eventuality.
We’ve been told for years that this day would come. It’s a day that has already arrived at newspapers across the country as more and more readers are turn to getting their news online.
What we’ve noticed is that this is especially true for readers who follow high school sports coverage.
Because of that, The Columbian sports department has spent the past several years working to improve its online content, when it comes to high school sports.
That includes more blog posts, videos, podcasts and an increased social media presence on a variety of different platforms.
This trend was a big factor in our decision to expand our coverage area to schools beyond where the print version of The Columbian is readily available.
So the loss of the Monday print version of The Columbian won’t put a big dent into our high school sports coverage in print, as Sunday is usually a very quiet day in high school sports.
In fact, one of the big reasons we created my Monday column more than 18 years ago, along with the weekly high school schedule, was to give our Monday edition of the paper some semblance of local sports coverage on a day when there was usually very little of that.
But a second change that was adapted in conjunction with the elimination of the Monday print edition will have an impact.
Also starting this week, our print deadline on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night will be more than two hours earlier.
That means that prep events that start at 7 p.m. — which is most basketball games, for example — won’t even be completed when we have to send our pages to press.
There are opportunities for us to get coverage of some 5:30 p.m. tip-offs, otherwise our prep coverage in the print edition will have a more feature-style to it for papers that land on doorsteps Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning.
Much of our box scores and standings will run a day later in print.
Our deadlines later in the week will allow us to continue to operate as we have been operating.
So this week’s prep coverage in the print version of The Columbian will look a little different.
But if you get your coverage online at Columbian.com or 360preps.com, you won’t notice a single change, as we will continue to offer unmatched prep coverage of high school sports in Southwest Washington.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at (360) 735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow him on Twitter @360TMart.
