[NU Sports] whining about media

[Roy S. Lamberton]

I agree Brad, 

As I wander the web looking for NU stories, and even finding most of them, I
reasonably am satisfied with the coverage provided by our "local" papers. 

Lets face it, they have a 4 [NFL/NBA/MLB] major league pro teams [LA has the MLB
and NBA] and their coverage will be driven by those teams.

NU also doesn't have the number of "local" boys playing. In Football it's a
little better, but in Basketball, Jitim was the only Chicago kid in how many
years? I'm not suggesting NU lower any standards to get local kids, but if some
kid goes to Illinois and scores a TD, he's going to get the coverage. The
presence of Brandon Lee, IMHO, will do a lot to get Chicago coverage for NU, but
we also have to start winning, and overcoming the Illinois BKB machine is going
to be tough.

Anyway, the Sun-Times covers NU about as well as the Trib [even with the Trib's
rumored "pipeline"]. They went out of their way to slam our Cats, and Telander's
continued ranting about how we've lost our innocence [if we ever had it] drives
me nuts. We'll leave the Jaybird out of all this - he's moved on to bigger
things anyway.

In any case, local kids' parents want to see their kid's name in the paper, and
the local newspapers want to provide that coverage for  whatever they charge
these days. Its why you always see stories about our local players in the Trib,
and not the kids from, say, Texas or New Jersey.

And you have to remember that for all those years, the Big 10 only sent #1 to
the Rose Bowl. Everyone else stayed home. 

It was an era when N**** D***, went to a bowl every year and garnered those 6-8
weeks of media coverage in a town that has more ND alums than ever went to the
school. To many people in Chicago, NU is that little elite, Methodist college up
on the north shore, somewhere past Loyola. Yeah, they have that big medical
school downtown, but all that does is mess up the parking off Michigan Avenue.

Chicago, as a major business hub, also has a lot of other Big 10 Alums, from
schools with much better records than NU in football. I know the largest alumni
club of my fraternity's Wisconsin chapter is in Chicago. I'm sure other's can
say the same.

Our largest 3 NU alumni clubs are in Washington, DC, New York and Los Angeles.
Those guys might follow the Wildcats, but they don't by the Trib or the
Sun-times.

The past few years has seen an expansion of NU coverage in the other papers
around Chicago - The Herald regularly sends a reporter to practices and
conferences. Tim Cronin at the Southtown tries to get to both NU and Illinois
events. Larry Watts fought a great fight to get NU coverage back in the Evanston
paper [you almost with they were a daily]. NU now gets some coverage down in
Peoria, and over in Gary.

As the Cats start to win regularly on the roundball court, and continue our
improvement in Football, and we start to appear in the post season more, we can
expect to get more media coverage. 

Until then, we're fighting the "who cares" syndrome, and while we do, most
people don't

Go Cats - Waste the Warriors!

rsl

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Roy S. Lamberton - Senior Associate
Computer Applications & Support Associates
and Publisher of Purple Reign, 
The Scout.com Northwestern University Site
(http://www.purplewildcats.com)
AIM Handle: CoachRoy74

=========================================
No Society has ever Taxed or Litigated
itself to prosperity...Think about it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com 
> [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On Behalf Of Brad Wilson
> Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 2:08 AM
> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: [NU Sports] whining about media
> 
> 
> If we're ever going to shake the "elitist" reputation
> that NU has, and maybe attract more local interest and
> fans, we need to stop making comments such as not
> wanting to call the Sun-Times a newspaper.
> 
> That's an insult to the hundreds of thousands of
> Chicagoans who read the S-T every day, and an insult
> to the many dedicated journalists there who bust their
> butt under difficult circumstances and make a
> difference (Hired Truck scandal, say) in the real
> world. 
> 
> And some fine writers with national reputations call
> the S-T home; Ebert most obviously. I dislike
> Moronetti (except when he's bashing the Cubs) and find
> Telander a talented but hopelessly preachy writer, but
> animus towards those two shouldn't color the whole
> newspaper.
> 
> The S-T isn't the New York Times and never will be;
> it's a urban tabloid aimed at a working-middle-class
> audience. Yes, there's gossip and some trashy stuff
> and fluff. That's part of the package.
> 
> Those who were too snobby to buy the S-T Sunday after 
> Saturday's glorious win missed a nice color photo of Backes' 
> return as we had the main-play spot on the back cover. 
> Inside, two full pages with more photos. Pretty damn good 
> coverage for a game that drew just 23,000 fans. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> =====
> "Life is more delectable/When it's disrespectable." -- Lorenz Hart 
> 
> "Quis ipsos custodes custodiet?" -- Juvenal
> 
> 
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