The Future of Sports Coverage

Recently both the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News laid off reporters which in effect greatly reduced or eliminated their San Jose Sharks NHL beat coverage. At the same time The Hartford Courant made the decision not to have a Yankees beat reporter follow the team on the road. For anyone following the newspaper business these past few years - these moves don't come as surprises. And they are not one-time corrections. They are part of a trend. Newspapers are losing revenue and staff cuts and travel restrictions are the main ways to combat those losses in revenues.

The situation reminds me about the protests against Nestle Carnation because of their practices regarding selling baby formula in Third World nations. Nestle Carnation convinced many parents in poor countries that the civilized thing and the best thing for the baby was to use baby formula instead of breastfeeding. However, the poor mothers did not have enough money to properly feed the babies. So they added more water to stretch out the formula that they could afford or they did not boil the water they added to the formula with the result being a baby that was either sick or malnourished.

I am reminded about the protests against Nestle Carnation because the sports coverage provided by traditional newspapers is becoming watered down by staff cuts and travel restrictions to the point of being useless. You just can't get any satisfying nourishment for the sports soul from constant AP dispatches. Meanwhile the traditional newspapers are still trying to sell us the line that sports fans need the "professional" reporting and viewpoints of "their" reporters as opposed to the more organic viewpoints of informed fans with blogs.

In the future I can foresee a few blogs dedicated to individual teams where the in depth analysis and game coverage rivals or surpasses the news and opinion you would get from the current large newspapers.

Imagine a blog run by a couple of entrepreneurial fans who get press passes to cover the home games. If these guys are good then the fans will come to read what they have to say. On the road - the blog could have assigned "reporters" who are fans of the team that live in or near the city the team is traveling to for the road game. These guys would essentially be "stringers" for the blog who may get some small remuneration but the real kick for the stringers would be covering a team for which they are passionate about.

The professional reporters would tell you that these "fan boys" would be nothing but a hindrance. That they would just be in the way of the real men trying to get a job done. I say the opposite is true. These "fan boys" would bring with them the perspective of the regular fan (something which is sorely lost on many sports reporters these days whose enjoyment of the game has been sucked dry by working for penny pinching companies).

The blogs would have "game threads" for each individual game. If you have ever read one of these game threads - say on Sons of Sam Horn for Red Sox games - you would know that for every few "wow that was a awesome hit" comment, there is a great stat tossed out by a knowledgeable fan or a question posed that you yourself have wondered about. The blog stringer could monitor the game thread during his coverage and use the best questions for his post-game interviews. Its a win-win that would build upon itself and allow the blog to start making money from advertising due to the number of visitors who would now view the blog as THE place to go to follow their favorite team.

Of course there is nothing to prevent the "professional" reporters from following the game thread and cherry-picking the best questions but this too is a win-win for the fan. Many reporters are too concerned with working their "story-angle" and don't realize that fans don't care who asked the question. They just care that the question gets answered.

I tell you - the day where what I described above is reality is not far off. In fact if the folks at say Sharkspage want to pick up the slack in coverage caused by the layoffs at the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News - I would be happy to volunteer to be the blog stringer to cover the games if the Sharks ever come to Boston or if they want someone to cover the Sharks AHL affiliate in Worcester.