Youth Hunt photos?

[Andrea Bruner]

Our newspaper charges to publish these photos because of the sheer number we get this time of year. For years we tried to establish certain guidelines for publishing these photos, but they always seemed to go out the window before the season was up, and then we had people call and ask when it was going to run, etc. An ad seems to be a fair to accommodate people in a timely manner, and they may choose the size of the photo based on what they are willing to pay.

Does anyone else's paper do this? What are your policies and thoughts on freebie vs. ad?

Thanks for any insight you can give on this matter.

[Lori Freeze]

We don't charge for news, period. We've struggled with dead deer pics, too, and this year we posted as many youth as we could (10 of them each about 15 picas wide), giving preference to the biggest bucks. We then posted ALL of them in a website gallery (about 20 total). We had some more submitted after the regular season started, one of them a huge 16-point. We didn't have room this week to run any, and will again post them in a web gallery. We have not had too many calls, but we are prepared to tell complainers that each week we have to choose which news to hold, and we have a hard time justifying holding someone's child or grandmother in order to run another person's dead animal with its tongue hanging out. We'll likely get the monster buck in the week issue, because the guys DO like to compare trophies.