Every Mariners game this week is a thriller, but I keep thinking about last Friday’s, when they won the American League Championship Series in 15 innings, the longest winner-take-all postseason game in MLB history.
That also made for a dramatic night at The Seattle Times. It delayed Friday night’s press run to produce a late edition with an A1 story with game results and four pages of photos, stories, stats and a column in a Mariners Extra sports section.
Yes, I’m being another kind of homer here. But it was a special moment and something increasingly rare as the newspaper industry shrinks, outsources production and prioritizes online editions over print. It also shows what local, independent newspapers are capable of doing when big news breaks and why they should be preserved.
While 47,025 fans were cheering the Mariners as they battled the Detroit Tigers Friday, dozens of Times employees nervously watched the clock, the game and their Slack messaging application.
Paul Barrett, sports editor, said the first edition must be done by 9:40 p.m. Late editions must be done — stories written and edited, photos filed and edited, pages designed and copy edited — by 10:55.
That’s earlier than before The Times sold a large press in Bothell in 2020. Now printing is done at its smaller press in Kent.
They are still later than many dailies’ deadlines nowadays. Barrett, Associated Press Sports Editors president, said peers, especially at chain newspapers, are seeing far earlier deadlines.
“They’ve gotten rid of their presses and their deadlines have moved way up,” he said.
Most recently, Gannett’s Arizona Republic closed its press after an Oct. 5 run and moved production to Las Vegas.
In early 2024, the Los Angeles Times closed its press and moved production to Riverside, Calif. Sports deadlines there are generally 5 p.m. but “we can often push til 6 o’clock and then that’s about it for us,” said Iliana Limón Romero, sports editor.
“It’s tough, it’s not ideal,” she said, adding that it’s better than East Coast papers she’s heard of with 10 a.m. or noon deadlines.
“It’s pretty widespread,” she said. “The consolidation of resources, the number of newspapers printing off a single printing press, has just exploded because the cost of paper just continues to grow exponentially and the expense is incredibly difficult to keep pace with.”
That doesn’t mean the L.A. crew leaves early. It produces online reports and an electronic edition with a 2 a.m. deadline.
The Los Angeles Times produced a special print section when the Dodgers won their division series over the Phillies last Thursday. It ran in Saturday’s edition.
Despite the delay, fans clamor for souvenir copies. Limón Romero said they scooped up both print and electronic editions after the Dodgers won the World Series last year.
“People had options and definitely they wanted both,” she said, adding that “people wanted to be part of the experience and to remember that a championship is hard to come by, so it’s meaningful when people get a chance to collect those keepsakes.”
In Seattle, Barrett had expected an easier Friday than it turned out to be, despite the Mariners series finale and a simultaneous University of Washington football game.
“We have a lot of games that don’t make first edition but we were expecting this one to, since it started at 5 p.m. or a little after 5,” he said. “It obviously didn’t.”
Barrett worked from Husky Stadium with two sports staffers and a photographer. His assistant editor, Sean Quinton, was at the Mariners game with six staffers and three photographers.
Seven people were on the sports copy desk plus photo editors and news copy editors, Barrett said.
Waiting for pages were more than 750 production and circulation workers, including truck drivers needing to catch ferries.
“We pushed them as far as we could to still be able to make transportation connections,” said Curtis Huber, senior director of circulation
The original plan was for a Matt Calkins column to run on A1. As the game continued it wasn’t clear he’d have time to write a column at all.
“It’s not like writing a short game story you can do pretty quickly,” Barrett said. “He needed to have enough time to write his column and to his credit he did it.”
Inning after inning, plans kept changing. A different story took the A1 spot in the first edition.
Raquel Comerford, a desk editor who coordinates production, requested a 15-minute deadline extension in hopes the game would finish in 13 innings.
Press managers told her they’d like to help but weren’t sure they could because Friday’s run is linked to production of a weekend edition that’s printed early and sent by mail on Saturday.
This also came the day after a power outage interrupted printing of Friday’s paper.
Even so, the request was escalated. Ten minutes later a message came from Huber: “Yes, let’s go. Go Mariners!” Comerford recalled.
It wasn’t over yet.
As the 14th inning began, the decision was made to close the first edition, which reaches around 15% of subscribers, largely outside of King County. Its coverage went to the 13th inning without results.
Finally, at 10:07 p.m., four hours and 58 minutes after the first pitch at 5:09 p.m., the Mariners won.
That left 63 minutes, with an extended late-edition deadline, to finish game stories and a column, and design four pages of a Mariners Extra sports section. The cover included a Jennifer Buchanan photo of Jorge Polanco celebrating his game-ending hit. Its “Sweet 15!” headline was suggested in an online brainstorming session by Managing Editor Lynn Jacobson.
Calkins’ column ran in the sports section and A1’s centerpiece was a scene-setter by Nicole Pasia, features engagement reporter.
“Their sports work always, always, always amazes me,” Comerford said, “because they’re able to squeeze the seconds out of the clock. They always have everything more or less pre-prepared. They keep updating their stories as the game is happening so it’s ready to go at a minute’s notice.”
Another fan of deadline sports writing in print is Tim Hevly, Mariners vice president of communications.
“The same words feel better to me on a printed piece of paper,” he said.
Hevly looks for newspapers wherever he travels and said he’s discouraged by how many places no longer have them.
“Maybe they’re printing three days a week, maybe they’re doing something else so I’ll see it online but I won’t necessarily see the printed product,” he said. “And lots of places, I get up in the morning and want to grab a cup of coffee and the paper, and I grab the paper and realize that last night’s game isn’t in it. It might be (the) two nights ago game or it might be a story that was clearly written before the game started because that’s what they could do deadline-wise.”
Hevly does what he can to support those on deadline.
But Friday presented extra challenges to those racing for quotes from coaches and players after the game, “because people have to spend 20 minutes spraying Champagne on each other.”
Cheers all around, and to more in late October.
Brier Dudley on Twitter: @BrierDudley is editor of The Seattle Times Save the Free Press Initiative. Its weekly newsletter: https://st.news/FreePressNewsletter. Reach him at bdudley@seattletimes.com.
