Monthly Archives: July 2009
Newspapers: Fewer content providers, less content
As someone recently let go (or cut loose, canned, axed, excised, shown the door, pushed out, shoved out, put out …) as part of staff cuts at a newspaper, I had a certain interest in reading the SportsBusiness Journal‘s well-executed piece about decreasing newspaper sports staffs and coverage. But this is a topic that should resonate with any thinking sports fan.
The coverage is shrinking. Now, if we’re talking about updates on Brett Favre, sure, there is still plenty out there. But you’re not getting as much about your local teams. As newspapers slice budgets and staff, fewer reporters and columnists cover the teams. Some papers are pooling resources with what used to be competitors and sharing coverage. Others are not covering teams on the road, relying on wire service reports.
To fill the information gap, more fans are getting their news directly from the teams themselves via club Web sites. According to a survey with the Journal story, though a majority still receive their team news from a newspaper either via print or online, nearly half the fans polled — 42 percent — said the team Web site was their preferred source of information.
The problem — or potential problem — is those sites ultimately are in the hands of the clubs, and, whether they choose to do so or not, the teams can control the message. You can argue whether the beat reporter or columnist for the local daily is objective, but at least you know the club owner isn’t signing his paychecks.
Though if Steve Bisciotti or Peter Angelos wants to put me on his payroll, guys, you know where to reach me.
Islanders Drop Radio Voices, To Simulcast TV Audio
Thanks to SMJ friend Neil Best for alerting me to this story in Newsday by Islanders beat writer Greg Logan on the decision by the New York Islanders not to renew the contracts of radio announcers Steve Mears and Chris King.
According to the article, the move was made after the team received permission from Madison Square Garden Network to simulcast the television audio of announcers Howie Rose and Bill Jaffe.
This is the first I had heard of such an arrangement by a “big-4″ professional sports team to simulcast television audio on radio, that is until pointed out in Logan’s piece that the practice is also being done by the Buffalo Sabres.
This may soon become the trend in sports where the role of radio play-by-play coverage becomes less relevant. Only baseball, with its slower pace, still translates well on radio. With ratings drops and revenue cuts facing teams and radio stations, I can see a day when all audio broadcasts of games will be off terrestrial radio and housed within a team’s website. Actually not a bad idea.
Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel- July 2009 Preview
The next edition of Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel is set for tonight at 1opm ET on HBO. We were once again given a preview copy of tonight’s segments. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but all four segments deal with individuals overcoming an illness or other afflictions.
Here’s a breakdown of the show:
Watson’s Run Helps ABC & PGA.com Reach Ratings Respectability
When Tiger Woods failed to make the cut in last week’s British Open it was felt that ABC would suffer another ratings disappointment. Woods sat out last year’s Open after undergoing knee surgery.
Enter Tom Watson.
The incredible run of the 59 year-old Watson attempting to win his sixth Open Championship helped ABC reach a 3.9 overnight Nielson rating. That number was up 11% over a year ago, but still below those of two years ago when Woods was in the field for all four rounds.
It amazes me that Watson’s near miracle victory could not translate to more eyeballs tuning in. Have we become that shallow when it comes to our golf viewing habits that it’s Tiger or bust?
That may be the case with television but not necessarily so online. PGA.com reports that it saw a 44% increase in online page views for the British Open. The site also notes that viewers of the site’s live streams were up 80% from 2008.
So people still like a good golf story. But where they get that story may be shifting.
The McNair Story’s Other Angle?
The dial on the coverage of the tragic death of Sahel Kazemi and Steve McNair seems like it has been set on 11 for much of the past two weeks.
But while there have been thousands of column inches dedicated to Steve McNair–not all of them putting their authors or subject in the best light–most of them have spared Steve McNair’s legacy (and his family that survives him) from discussing some of the seedier aspects of his personal life, beyond the obvious affair with Kazemi.
It seems that maybe that angle getting lost in all the noise may not be all accidental after all.
Clay Travis, formerly of Deadspin.com, has a new post up on his website discussing The Tennessean‘s recent killing of a story that would detail, through the use of anonymous sourcing, the reported multiple extramarital relationships Steve McNair had with various women around town along with the more glowing portrayals he’s received since passing.
Travis puts forth that the paper killed the story because they didn’t want to rely on anonymous sourcing (not necessarily a bad thing, ethically) and didn’t want to deal with the public backlash that revealing “multiple” affairs would engender.
The Tennessean is denying such reports, but the whole discussion does really make one wonder what exactly this story is about.
I won’t call out specific writers, but many have seemingly made it seem as though Steve McNair is dead not because, if the murder/suicide theory is correct, his girlfriend was upset and severely troubled, but because he had a girlfriend in the first place.
I’m not going to condone cheating on one’s wife, but that’s an entirely separate matter from the violent events that ended McNair’s life.
The truth is that many people–athletes, politicians, the powerful, the everyday–cavort with those who they are not married to.
Do they deserve to die? That’s hardly a just punishment. So drawing some sort of causal link between Steve McNair having an affair and Steve McNair getting shot by his girlfriend is a pretty awful abuse of logic.
I’ve even read several writers pull out the old “nothing good happens after Midnight” line about Steve McNair, when he was apparently shot while asleep at home (just not his marital home) with the door locked.
This is not a player out at 3 AM who was targeted and violently slain because of gang involvement. He wasn’t at some club throwing cash around when a shooting broke out.
He was at home, asleep.
Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time? Of course.
Would he be alive if he never cheated? It seems very likely.
Does that mean that cheating somehow directly caused his death? No. He was doing something wrong, but things are not so black and white. Was what he did any worse than an athlete who drinks and drives?
This new wrinkle with The Tennessean just slams the point home more. I’m hesitant to call them out on anything that remains unconfirmed. They deny killing the story and that’s good enough for me.
But there may have very well been other women than Sahel Kazemi, at least according to various reports and rumors, and if you’re going to talk about Steve McNair, it’s not proper to simply gloss over the more unfortunately character wrinkles in what otherwise seems like a great guy.
Without knowing why (or if) The Tennessean really killed the story, it’s hard to comment much. But I do know that there has been a real lack of context in most of the McNair reports that I’ve read so far.
It’s easy to get caught up in this sort of things, but I do wonder why most of the media has been hesitant to really discuss the “other” side of McNair’s life while at the same time willing to say that he died because he made “poor choices,” as though he were courting death by vacationing with a 20-year-old.
If they truly have reports from multiple women who are willing to discuss their time with McNair (who can, of course, prove they were romantically involved with him) but are only refusing to have their name published–and they’re compelled by reasons beyond journalistic standards to withhold that information– then this certainly looks bad for the paper.
Anonymous sourcing is a touchy subject. On the one hand the public has the right to hear the truth about its public figures, especially one that died so tragically and so young. The public also has the right to vet the statements these women would make about McNair, but the women have the right to not have their names dragged through the media.
It’s a difficult ethical dilemma to wade through, and anonymous sourcing, in this regard (assuming the reporters do their due diligence) would solve these problems.
If The Tennessean won’t go that far as a rule, then that’s fair.
But some other paper probably will.
In my mind, though, the question is when will the schizophrenic media finally decide exactly what story they’re trying to tell: McNair, the charitable father tragically killed by a troubled woman? McNair, the fly by night playboy whose illicit personal life finally caught up with him? or the truth of it, which probably survives somewhere in the middle of those extremes?
You can guess which option I’d prefer.
