It's true - people buy the newspaper for sports

I am not part of the survey population here; so these comments represent the views of a sample size of ONE.

I buy newpapers - the kind I can hold in my hands and get ink on my fingers from - just about every day. I subscribe to the Wash Post daily and Sunday; I buy a copy of the Wash Times at least 4-5 days a week and I read the Sunday NYT more weekends than not. When I travel in the US, I read the local papers; when I travel overseas, I read the Int'l Herald Tribune whenever I can find it.

THE first thing I read in any paper - except the Sunday NYT - is the sports section. What I get there is a summary of what happened "overnight" in the sports world. In baseball season, I focus on the box scores and try to keep track of what teams/players are hot and what teams/players are not. Same thing for NBA season.

What frustrates me is when sports sections in newspapers devote huge amounts of space to pictures and fluffy sports feature stories that do not keep me informed about what happened yesterday and who's hot and who's not. Sad to say that plenty of papers are doing this today. The Wash Post is a prime offender here and - candidly - I could opt to cancel that subscription if they keep on the "lack of news" arc that they are on in the sports section at the moment.

Oh, why do I not read the NYT sports section first? Frankly, I have never thought that the NYT sports section was nearly as good as at least a dozen sports sections in other papers around the country. Every outfit has its long-suits and its short-suits; for the NYT, my opinion is that sports is a short-suit.

And since I am the one buying the paper, my opinion on that subject matters a lot...

 

I am, like Moddy, mid 50s, love what I do, and just hanging on as the business evolves...hoping the model to make money in the online world is discovered before I become extinct.
We priorize local, right down to senior shuffleboard and seniors bowling scores -- give them something they can't get anywhere else. Our company offered a free tablet with a three year print subscription and they were lined up at the counter to take advantage of the deal. Unfortunately, once they got out the door, they didn't and don't use it to check out our product.
Not sure what the solution is long term, or if there is one. But I hope our company continues to throw darts at the wall for eight years to find one.

 

Yankee Fan, I could have written your assessment word for word. I come at this from the perspective of someone who got out of the business after a career of almost 20 years. I feel insanely fortunate to have found a job using my writing and editing skills with an employer that is not a media company. I'll always love newspapers, but I find myself unable to advise young, aspiring sports writers to stick with it.

If that makes me a bitter-prick sellout, then so be it. I'm happy with the job I found and I have no regrets about leaving the newspaper business. But Yankee Fan is right ... there's no working your way up from the boondocks anymore. There's tracking in our business, like any other, and if you don't get on the right track (i.e. an internship with a major outlet) your chances of making it to that level are very low. When I was in college and dreaming of a big-boy beatwriting job, that's not how it was.

I know several guys who are talented writers in their 20s -- one in particular who I think has a lot of potential. But he's been out of college for five years and is still doing preps at a small-time outlet. What are the chances it's going to work out for him? He's stuck even though he's at least as good as other guys I know who had the right internships and then immediately landed jobs at major outlets -- no detours through places like Elizabethtown, Ky., or Paris, Texas. It's not a question of talent or hard work anymore. You have to be one of the few who ends up with a chair when the music stops.

I know how this sounds, and I know it's not what any of us wants to hear. The folks who've had success and experienced advancement in the business probably disagree. But the young guns headed to Elizabethtown or Paris or any number of other places you can barely find with a map need to hear it -- every bit as much as they need to hear any other perspective on this crazy business.

 

Having the right "chair" has, to some extent, always been true. Always.