In Some Of the Strangest Newspapering I've Ever Seen, the Game Story Of a Saturday 3-Overtime Drake Basketball Game Was In the Register On Tuesday

Questions, questions. I think the three-overtime, almost three-hour Drake-Wichita State game at the Knapp Center ended at 10:59 p.m. Saturday. Look, I know the problems a sportswriter faces when he's covering a game that ends at that time, now that the deadlines are probably earlier than they've ever been. I've been there. In my newspaper years, I covered plenty of games--mostly Iowa and Iowa State football games on the west coast in the Pacific time zone--that ended at 11 p.m., midnight or even 1 a.m., Iowa time--that made it difficult [maybe impossible] to get complete game stories in the city edition of the paper, even when the deadlines were later. The complete stories, with quotes from the players and coaches, then appeared in the Monday paper. Either that or I'd write a completely different story, then known as a "follow," that included the quotes from the previous game as well as a look-ahead to the next game. Unfortunately, "follows" are no longer in vogue, and I miss them. It's beyond me how a newspaper can spend all the money it takes to fly a sportswriter to Austin, Lubbock and College Station, TX, pay for his lodging and meals, and not require him to write a second or third story to make the costs of the trip worthwhile. I'm not saying the writer is at fault in the Drake-Wichita State situation; all I'm wondering is why it suddenly dawned on the bosses at the paper yesterday that the final version of the reporter's story wasn't in the various editions of the Sunday paper. If anything, the final version of the Drake-Wichita State game story should have been in the Monday morning paper, not the Tuesday morning paper. Oh, well. Just another thing I don't understand. I guess it won't be long before there won't be a print version of the newspaper that people can second-guess or cancel their subscriptions to.