You work the two-man sports desk at the Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, Ohio, and the Cleveland Indians lose (again) in an East Coast game. When the wire story finally crosses, it’s all wrong for your audience — wrong lead, wrong quotes, wrong stats. It’s 12:20 and the paper has to be on the lawn at 6. You’ve got 10 minutes to rewrite.

In the old days, of course, you would have just sent your own reporter on the road, back when you had money, back when the Indians were good. Game stories are commodities now, and newsrooms are outsourcing the coverage.

In my latest for the Nieman Lab, I explain the AP’s response to papers who can’t staff away games (all 81 of them) during the regular baseball season. The network will now file “hometown leads,” stories that focus on the losing team, in addition to its standard “game-over” stories. Editors have been asking for it for years.

I interview the AP’s sports editor, Terry Taylor, and the man who works on that sports desk in Elyria.