Old Media Looking at New Problems

There was an announcement today that "L.A. Times beat writers will no longer routinely cover road trips of the Kings and Ducks". Think about that for a minute.

It used to be that sportswriters would denigrate "bloggers" because they don't have the same access as they do. Now if the sportswriters are watching the road games from their couches at home - how does that differ from the average fan watching the same game feed? Have I mentioned the irony that this change was announced on a blog? (Though to be fair - Ben Maller is an industry professional.)

In many cities the NHL is the red-headed stepchild as far as "beats" are concerned. Many sports journalists use the local NHL beat as a stepping stone to more "mainstream" sports like the NFL, NBA or MLB. The LA Times is a major paper but this change of no road games has been made at many smaller papers already (and not just in hockey - almost all the road games for the Red Sox for my local paper come with an AP byline).

I think we have started to see blogs by people with a real love and enthusiasm for their local team already surpassing much of the analysis of the old media (think of Eric McErlain's coverage of the Washington Capitals). This trend of better blog coverage and worsening old media coverage will continue. How soon before the local team starts filling the press box seats that used to be used by out of town newspaper writers with local bloggers? Why should the team let those press box seats go to waste? Why wouldn't the team want more coverage by the best bloggers?

If road games in many sports will be covered by AP freelancers - how long before the AP just starts posting that stuff online to get the ad revenue direct? Newspapers are starting to become nothing more than hard copy middlemen.

In the very near future sports will be relying on a trinity of cable broadcast games (home and away), sports talk radio and blogs. Newspaper sports sections will go the way of the typewriter and the top columnists will do the equivalent of syndicating themselves by starting their own blogs where the Internet ad revenue will be their salaries.