Monday will have a different feel for many in the Borderland community.
It won’t be as bad as last Monday (insert Minnesota Vikings curse word here), but it will leave many searching for something to do when their Daily Journal ... I mean Journal ... doesn’t arrive in the mail.
For years the newspaper was tossed onto a driveway or sidewalk and most recently cycled through the mail Monday-Friday. But now it will arrive only on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
For the sports community, this is far from ideal. Then again, if the paper revolved around sports, Ben Gordon would have a stat tracker on the front page, Super One would have a coupon for free jelly every time Brady Hjelle posted a shutout and the name of the paper itself would be The Bronko Times, The Nagurski News or Let’s Read About Hockey.
It’s not time to break your putter on a tree, however. It’s time to adjust to a curveball.
So what will change?
Sports is moving to B1, so no more flipping around and paging in. It’s also guaranteed one color page.
Wednesday’s edition will be blasted with sports content from Friday through Tuesday night. Saturday’s paper prints early Friday, so unless there’s a major sporting event Friday night, Saturday’s sports section will only boast local news from Wednesday and Thursday night. This will allow for more feature content to hit newsstands Saturday, including the Player of the Week. The plan is for more player profiles, columns and features on Saturday, while Wednesday is dominated by the busiest sports nights — Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.
Photos will be larger and there will be an aggressive effort to try and get to know more about the individual athletes that make up this sports landscape. There will also be the Web site.
In a brave new world with iPads, iPhones, iMacs and phones named after fruit capable of surfing the Web, Web sites become that more important. Borderland sports will continue to expand on the Web and in print with the hopes the print edition helps the Web site, and the Web site helps the print edition.
Consider this a stretch with timely relevance, but if there’s one comparison in the sports world today that compares to our switch to biweekly, it’s Brett Favre. Favre was solid and the one-and-only for years in the great sports town of Green Bay, just like The Daily Journal was solid and the one-and-only for years in a great sports-loving area by a bay. Favre’s bold — and unfortunate for many — move to the Vikings is on par with our bold — and unfortunate for many — move to biweekly. Favre took some hits for his switch and we’ve taken hits for our switch. Now do I expect this switch to end in a gut-wrenching and heartbreaking fashion like an interception with 19 seconds remaining in the NFC Championship?
Fortunately, that’s not possible.
Our printing press can’t illegally tackle us below the knees and sprain our ankle, putting 12 computers in a group won’t get a 12-computers-in-the-huddle penalty flag thrown and our opponent will never be motivated by a raucous fan base fresh off a catastrophic natural disaster.
We’re moving on looking to make the best of the future just like Favre, and everything will be fine.
So long Daily Journal. Hello Journal.
