I recently received a letter from a concerned reader asking why Oceana County Press only covers the sporting events of Hart Public Schools. I was glad she asked this question and I decided that I would share my explanation to all our readers.
First, a little history of our company. Media Group 31, LLC owns and operates Oceana County Press. I own Media Group 31, a company I began in 2012 with the creation of Mason County Press. We are based out of Scottville. In 2014, we launched Oceana County Press.
We are a small business with only myself and one full time employee, Allison Scarbrough. Allison has worked the Oceana County news beat for several decades and, in my opinion, is by far the best and most experienced journalist in the county.
When I started MCP and OCP I wanted them to be well-rounded local news services. However, my father always taught me to never do something half-way (he used a different term). For this reason, I chose to concentrate on local news rather than local sports. Between Mason and Oceana counties, there are eight school districts that offer a variety of high school sports. In my former career of working for a local daily newspaper, sports editor was a full time job and that sports editor had at least two “stringers” who worked for him, covering sports almost every night of the week.
As the years have passed, we have seen a decline in local news coverage from our competitors. We have also seen a decline in local sports coverage. For this reason, last fall I made the decision to enter into the sports-coverage world.
Owning a small business that relies on the support of advertisers, which are also small businesses, can be a challenge. There’s only so much cash-flow and people who work for you like to get paid for their work. But, you sometimes just have to take the leap — and do it yourself.
Back in the late fall, I started sending emails to all the local athletic directors announcing that Oceana County Press and Mason County Press would begin covering high school sports beginning with the winter season. The letter requested schedules and rosters and included instructions on how to send us information following the games. All of these coaches know the procedure as they send information to other media following their games. Sometimes those media outlets choose to send a reporter to cover a select game, but most of the time, the coach provides the information. It’s actually as simple as pushing a button.
To date, only Hart has responded and therefore, you only see Hart’s scores and game recaps.
We are a two-person operation and our priority in “pursuing” stories is to cover the news. We don’t have the personnel to reach out to every coach after every game. Those coaches can simply add our email address to their list and send us the information as they do with the other outlets. It seems to work for Hart, Mason County Central, Mason County Eastern, Ludington, and the Lakeshore Badgers co-op hockey team. It certainly can work for Shelby, Walkerville, Pentwater and Hesperia. We would be more than happy to post the results of their games. We also accept photographs submitted by readers.
To the coaches, as stated in our letters sent out in November, you may submit your game recaps to us by sending that information to sports@mediagroup31.com.
Ideally, we would like to see a photo of the score sheets from each team, the final score, where the game was played, your team’s record and some comments about the game. A roster and schedule is helpful as well. We also welcome photos.
Sincerely,
Rob Alway
Editor-in-Chief
PS: We are still looking for more advertisers and sponsors to help us grow this service. If you are a business owner/manager, please email me at editor@mediagroup31.com.
Individuals who would like to help may do so one of several ways. For $10 a month, you can subscribe to our Daily Briefing email, which includes the day’s headlines plus special Sports Briefings several times a week. This can be paid monthly by credit card or yearly via check or credit card. You may email the same address above with the subject line: Subscription, to sign up.
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