Marshall Texas
I just completed Marshall Texas High School and I am going to vent on the newspapers and Coaches that deal with these papers. I have dug through many newspapers in my life and I pretty much know the ones that are excellent and ones that are just plain crap. I’m just judging the Sports pages for the teams I have covered. Before I release my grades for newspapers in the last 66 years I am going to review the Marshall News Messenger.
Since the 1996-97 season to present I have never seen a worse sports section. I have holes in my data that cover nine to 12 games a season not being covered. This is a combination of having poor sports editors and Head Coaches that are concerned about looking good. Gadsden High School in Anthony has no local papers and I have better records for them than what I dug out of the Marshall paper. If it wasn’t for the Shreveport or Longview papers being available online I would have less data than what I have now. For a newspaper that covers the local high schools there should be no excuses to not at least post a score and the leaders of that game. The Hobbs News Sun post scores from Middle Schools. If you don’t get the score a phone call to the coach should be all that is required. A home town newspaper should have a priority to the local schools first and the National scene second.
With that being said, here is my grade for the newspapers on how they cover the local sports scene in their community I have researched. Grading scale is Excellent, very good, good, fair, poor:
Hobbs News Sun, excellent
Carlsbad Current Argus, excellent
Clovis News Journal, Very Good
Alamogordo Daily News, Very Good
Roswell Daily Record, Very Good
Odessa American, Very Good
Midland Reporter Telegram, Very Good
Abilene News Reporter, Very Good
San Angelo Standard Times, Very Good
Lubbock Avalanche Journal, Very Good
Amarillo Daily News, Good
Las Cruces Sun News, Very Good
El Paso Times, Very Good
El Paso Herald Post, Very Good
Albuquerque Journal, Very Good
Albuquerque Tribune, Very Good
The Santa Fe New Mexican, Very Good
Farmington Daily Times, Very Good
Gallup Independent, Good
Fort Worth Star Telegram, Fair
Cleburne Times Review, Very Good
Marshall News Messenger, poor
Altus Times, Very Good
The Arizona Republic, Very Good
