Does your paper REALLY need a columnist

Cincy was once a great sportswriting town. The subjects are still there. Daughtery is good but I go back to when Sullivan was there and Tim Smith was there and other talent.
Back then, it was worth plunking down a quarter to read what they wrote (Smith wasn't a columnist but a damn good reporter).
I can't say I hold that same feeling. One of the best rosters of columnist talent ever assembled may have been the Philadelphia Daily News. They had Stan Hockhman, Thom Greer, Tom Cushman, Hoffman was learning the craft. Every day, there was a reason to want to purchase a paper.
The Washington Post of the 70's and early 80's was the same way. Hell, even the stodgy N.Y. Times gave you a reason to buy the paper and read the sports sections.
Those guys had voices and took you to the game, to the locker room and to the newsroom all in 20 inches. I miss those days but I know the past is the past.

 

I think it's nice to have one or two sports columnists, but I think some newspapers went overboard in the 1990s with 4-6 sports columnists. Tower of Babel effect, watering down the importance of the column. Also, watering down the quality since not all of them were good.

Do we need columnists? I respectfully disagree that they are more necessary now that reporting is available elsewhere. Opinion is available elsewhere, too, in fact a lot more available than competent reporting is. Theoretically a clever blogger could offer pretty good analysis, but it takes a lot of money to provide home-and-away coverage of one team and a pretty large staff to offer in-depth beat coverage of every team your readers care about.

I've spent almost my entire career on newspapers with more than 100K circ, almost all of them in competitive markets, and I have never seen the addition or subtraction of a sports columnist affect circulation in any measurable way. I've seen papers leave a columnist spot open for a good length of time and it had no measurable effect on circulation. And on two of the newspapers on my resume, the majority of people in readership surveys could not identify the No. 2 sports columnist on one of the papers (275K daily, 425K Sunday) and on another (168K daily, 225K Sunday) most could not identify the lead sports columnist, even though I thought the guy on the first paper was decent and the guy on the second paper was pretty good. We overestimate the star appeal.

That doesn't mean I think columnists are worthless. Some papers have decided that bureaus in Washington and movie reviewers were luxuries, too, and maybe they are -- but having them sends a message to readers about what their newspaper strives to be and by extension what we think of our customers. Some people (like me) buy purely functional cars, but if you want to attract high-end customers you'd better offer leather seats, etc. If you want readers to perceive your newspaper as the best news source in your region, you need to offer some extravagances.

 

I think in the 50's, people might have picked up a paper to read what a columnist wrote and you could see that impact in circulation on any given day. I agree Frank, those days are long gone.

 

I think keeping it to two columnists is a good idea, and definitely keep it to one column an issue. I've seen several big papers squeeze in two or three columns in one day. THAT is when it gets watered down to me.

 

disagree. People love columnists to either validate their own thinking, or to get pissed off at when they disagree.
People often read the columnists they disagree with more than the ones they agree with, but when you look at things that identify newspapers, columnists are at the top of the list
And there is something about columnists in the paper - as opposed to on-line, where any idiot can spout off - that gives them a legitimacy not yet found on the web

 

Heck no. We don't even need writers. Appeal to the communities, hire pops or moms to attempt to write high school gamers, fill the potholes with the peewees, and oh yes, limit your desk to one pagination person.

Bunch. Of. Excrement.

 

Many papers have been doing that for years.

 

The same way in that I often look here when something pops in sports to read what everyone's feeling ... that's the same reason I gravitate toward the columnist in any daily.

 

Obviously, people don't need newspapers to find out who won and how anymore, so I figure the opinion part of the section is the only completely unique part of it, especially if it has a couple of good columnists that don't just regurgitate the simplest point of view. It is their inside view that people are reading for.

 

For juco and high school coverage? No. At least not a full-time one that has no other job duties. Even at smaller places, there should be some kind of general columnist. We have one, but his columns are made up most of the time and about himself. He's just phoning it in until his retirement in a few years.