Not So Good For Sports Journalism …

This has been a dark week for sports journalism in the US.  Let me start with the largest city in the US – – NYC – – where we got an announcement from the NY Times that it will drop its sports section in the print edition and turn over sports coverage to The Athletic in its online editions.  For the moment at least, there have not been firings/layoffs from the sports section; reporters who covered various aspects of sports – – say business of sports – – were “reassigned” to other sections of the paper – – the business section in the example here.  Sorry to be so cynical here, but I wonder how long it will be until those other sections appear “bloated” to the bean counters and buyouts/layoffs begin.

• Over/Under here is December 1, 2023 …

The motto of the NY Times has been:

“All the news that’s fit to print.”

So, I wonder if that tag line must change now that the Times will no longer print anything related to sports.  Somehow, that news is “unfit to print”?  Here is how management chose to spin this announcement:

“We plan to focus even more directly on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large.”

Translation:

• We will publish periodic erudite fluff pieces tangentially related to sports.  Sports fans will read the first three paragraphs before tuning out – – but the online clicks will still count.

Having said all the above, this is not such a great loss to sports fans in NYC because the Times sports section has been outpaced by the NY Post for at least the last 20 years if not longer than that.

Moving along to the second most populated city in the US – – Los Angeles – – we got an announcement from the sports editor of the LA Times that they were “reimagining the sports section”.  Because the LA Times sold off its printing presses – – let that sink in for a moment – – and because they recently laid off more than 50 copy editors and consolidated that function within the newsroom, the LA Times would require reporters to have their stories for tomorrow’s paper done by 6:00 PM PDT.  Think about that for just a moment and realize that games involving the Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, Clippers and Kings almost always begin after that deadline.  So, a report or column centered on a game on Monday night cannot find its way into the paper until at least Wednesday.  By that point, sports fans will likely have moved on to another game/story/issue.

It seems to me that some of the top decision makers at the LA Times have chosen a path that leads to the demise of the print edition of the paper and its continued existence to be carried on by the Internet.  The previously taken decision – – and the acting on that previous decision – – to sell the printing presses must make a rational person shake his/her head in confusion.  Radio stations don’t sell their antennas; farmers don’t sell their fields; Microsoft doesn’t sell its computers – – unless there is some longer-term plan in place to get out of the current business model.  But a newspaper can sell its printing presses without anyone even raising an eyebrow?

Down the road from LA in San Diego there is news that the owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune is selling the paper to Alden Global Capital.  If history is any guide, the folks at Alden will sell off assets, lay off employees and leave the paper as a shell of what it used to be.  According to one report, the Union-Tribune now has 108 editorial/reporter staff employees – – down from almost 400 about 15 years ago – – and just about every report on this transaction expects layoffs to come quickly under Alden’s ownership.  San Diego is not a city that is considered to be a “sports hotbed” in the US, so I suspect the sports department there will devolve to a handful of folks doing live coverages and a lot of AP reporting.

And finally, in the third largest city in the US – – Chicago – – the remnants of the two papers that used to dominate the news scape in the city – – the Sun-Times and the Tribune – – both got scooped and put out to dry by the college paper at Northwestern University – – The Daily Northwestern.  The story involved hazing in the Northwestern football program which was corroborated by an independent investigation; that led to the president of the university announcing a two-week suspension for Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald to be served prior to the opening of this year’s training camp.  Reporters for the “big-boy papers” took that at face value even though such a suspension is not even a slap on the wrist.  The school kids dug in deeper.

Based on their reporting about details of the hazing and the extent of the hazing, the university had to do a major course correction and in about 2 days it announced that Pat Fitzgerald was terminated as the Head Coach even though the football season will start in about 7 weeks.  It took the Sun-Times and the Tribune a couple of days just to catch up on reporting about the findings in the Daily Northwestern that set all this in motion.

This is not all that surprising because both Chicago papers have gone through their own downsizing/reimagination in prior years.  Today, these are not the newspapers that had writers like Mike Royko or Jay Mariotti or Steve Rosenbloom or Dan Pompeii.  My guess is that the LA Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune are on a path to look like the Chicago papers in about 3-5 years.  The NY Times will continue to exist and be respected because it is the NY Times, and it never needed a sports section to bring any attention to itself.

It was a dark week indeed for sports journalism in the US…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………