[NU Sports] CFB Postseason...Survey Says... (fwd)

[Roy Lamberton]

Ben,

You probably noticed that sports coverage is starting to drift down to the
prep and youth travel levels because those people will buy a newspaper to
read about their kid and his or her teammates.

At the World Series, we have newspaper reporters or stringers from every
team's home town, and in some cases broadcast teams on both the web and over
the air back home. I have noticed that more and more papers are contracting
with our local guys or if they are Gannett, picking up the stories from our
local papers.

What is important here is local info. People don't care about the college up
the street, they're interested in how their local HS or travel team did
yesterday.

Add that most College teams (including NU) now close practices to media 3
days a week, and you can see why we don't have a story-a-day. Even the
Daily, where the local interest includes the Wildcats, doesn't have a
football story every day during the season. The ability to cover the team
just isn't there.

I once helped build an award winning radio news department at a public
station down in Texas. Our mantra in the newsroom was that every national
story should have a local component. The show we created at 5 PM was the
daily newspaper in town, and the first producer went on the be the editor of
the local newspaper.

One more anecdote; Prior to last year, the Delaware American Legion Baseball
teams could rarely get their scores in the paper. After talking with the
local sports editor about the league, and finding out what they needed to
"drag and drop" scores into the paper, we wound up getting coverage of our
games, and their lead HS reporter at our final two days of the state tourney
with pictures in the sports section. 

The key was the local component. Gannett is cutting payrolls, but not at
their weekly papers because they are read, and are a good mailing conduit
for color flyers. The big papers, with the big name reporters who have to
cover the professional teams are finding that there just isn't as much
support for those pro teams if they don't win every day and unless they take
that antagonistic stance about the team, nobody buys the paper to read their
stuff (see Moronetty)

On the other hand, last year, I did live updates on the Legion site for the
final 2 games. We had over 1,000 hits from parents who couldn't make the
games but "watched" on the internet. Streaming video is next on the agenda
there.

So, if I'm training Journalists, I'm going to try to convince them that
their real future is in the weekly papers and local internet. Even the
Jaybird realized that.

rsl

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Roy S. Lamberton - Senior Associate & Unix Guru.
Computer Applications & Support Associates
-------------------- Also ----------------------
Publisher: Purple Reign (Scout.com/Fox Sports)
Commissioner Delaware American Legion Baseball
Retired Senior Chief Cryptologic Technician [R]
Northwestern University - Sp 1974 - 
Chi Phi: Pi74, KD68
==========  Go Cats -  Beat 'em All  ===========
A Few Basic Truths:
  You cannot Legislate Morality
  You cannot Litigate Peace
  You cannot Tax yourself to Prosperity
  Wealth transfer makes everyone poor
Its all been tried, so why do we keep trying?
================================================


-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Ben Adler
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:48 PM
To: nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] CFB Postseason...Survey Says... (fwd)

You know, believe it or not, I was hoping to keep this discussion OUT of
politics...

As for some of the other issues being raised, the attention span point is a
pretty fair one.  But I do still think there are enough people who care
enough about various subjects to read (or listen to) in-depth stories. 
Meanwhile, Mike and John make good points about how we often don't research
our subjects enough before writing our stories.  Of course, making blanket
statements here is dangerous, but you can usually tell when a reporter has
done his/her research and when they haven't.

Medill does have some non-journalism class requirements, but they're not all
that significant: only one economics class, for example.  That's an area I
wish I had learned more about in college.  Of course, my parents still think
all I got at Medill was a "trade school" education.

But what makes this "economics/market of journalism" discussion relevant to
this list?  How about the ever-shrinking Northwestern sports coverage in the
Trib, Sun-Times and elsewhere?

Just a handful of years ago, NU football had stories in the Trib and ST
almost daily during the season.  Now they get 1-2 a week, plus a blurb or
two if we're lucky.  And the reporters have higher priorities elsewhere, so
they don't have time to build sources or learn the team.  Their stories get
more and more superficial every year.

That's how this affects us.  And that's why we should care.

-- Ben



________________________________
From: Dennis W. Brandt <tbng at comcast.net>
To: nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 2:14:00 PM
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] CFB Postseason...Survey Says... (fwd)

<Here's the bottom line: There will always be a market for solid, hard,
investigative news - the kind currently offered by the NYT, WashPost, WSJ,
NPR, etc. <The question is, how will we want to consume it?

Would that the NYT, NPR, etc. actually did investigative news instead of
pumping out liberal propaganda.  No one has noted that is part of the reason
for many newspapers' failures.  Too many are simply dishonest and slanted.
Sometimes I think I'm reading Civil War-era newspapers when they  didn't
apologize for supporting one party or the other.

One other reason:  The world is losing its attention span.  Fewer and fewer
want to take the time to read in-depth reports.  Allow me one other
observation:  I don't believe there are many journalists who are all that
knowledgeable. 
_______________________________________________
nwu-sports site list
nwu-sports at tssi.com
http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports



      
_______________________________________________
nwu-sports site list
nwu-sports at tssi.com
http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports