Kindred's frightening look at the future of sportwriting

Echoes of my own old arguments. Fresh out of college folks or younger aren't your likely newspaper subscribers and never were. But as they go from renting to buying, and coupling up and having kids and paying taxes and belonging to a community, they come to newspapers. Things got topsy-turvy because advertising started targeting and corporations started catering to 18-25 year olds. Made newspapers feel old and out of touch overnight.

But just like Twitter, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should -- targeting 18-25 year olds as the be-all and end-all niche market. Nor does it mean that you've figured out a way to make money off of it. Newspapers have abandoned adults as audience in order to chase kids. Might as well be trying to sell them Dependz.

 

If any of that half cared about sports at all, you went to college with some real sacks of tits then. I don't think I met a guy on my campus in four years who didn't know the NBA existed, or the existence of Allen Iverson. I remain convinced that Zach Leonsis is never going to read the sports pages, no matter what we try.

Now, the 18-25 year olds who do follow sports, they are people we might be able to get interested in our product. Those are people we need to figure out how to reach.

 

I thought this was just about Kindred's frightening look.
He could use a better mugshot. Poor guy looks like a cup of coffee with a cigarette in it. ;D

 

Glad this guy doesnt work for me.

 

I liked the piece, Dave, in large part because you let Leonsis have his say. We don't have to agree with him, or put stock in what his kid thinks or reads on his iPhone, but I think the more perspectives the better when it come to this discussion.

That said, yes the Iverson thing is weird. He had the 5th best-selling jersey in the NBA last season. If you don't know Iverson then you don't like the NBA, and if you don't like the NBA then you're probably not going to read a straight NBA story no matter how behind-the-scenes it is.

Second, as Wingman noted, the SI issue in question was clearly aimed at the father not the son. You could even make the case that it's a good example of targeted journalism. Know your readership, right? Stick Tebow or Brady or LeBron on the cover and you might get a different response (again, presuming the kid actually likes sports). Maybe not, but I'd put more stock in that example.

Third, I agree with the sentiment of cutting down the who/what/where/when. Same for the homework idea. But just because 18-25 year-olds like their information served differently doesn't mean they aren't as smart as any other 18-25 year-olds that have come before.There's a shit-ton of analysis and discussion on the web, and as always there is a huge chunk of the sports fan population that will gravitate toward that even if it's banal, just as they gravitated to sports talk radio 20 years ago. But the chunk that liked good newspaper and magazine writing and columns, the chunk that enjoys Ray Ratto and Plaschke and the kind of work that Jeff MacGregor and Wright Thompson and Scott Price produce - those people don't suddenly stop existing. Look at Deadspin. No matter what you think of the site or Tommy Craggs, the dude is clearly very bright, knows his way around a sentence and isn't afraid to report [and I'll put the usual disclaimer here that I am not Mr. Craggs, or Ratto, or Price, etc.] And I'll bet you that Deadspin has a pretty solid readership in the 18-25 demographic.

Now, I'm not saying I'd emulate Deadspin. But when it comes to web readership, I've got to think (hope?) that five years from now there will be sports destinations where people go to read smart, thoughtful, well-reported stories, presented however they may be presented. I'll put my faith in execution over approach or gimmicks or trying to give the reader exactly what he wants. This may be an imperfect analogy, but I don't watch HBO (and pay for it) because it tries to figure out what I want to see on TV (as far as subject matter). Rather, all I expect from HBO is that the shows be really damn good. An ensemble drama about elderly tax accountants in Boise? I'll give it an episode. Create an online sports brand with that kind of cred and I think people - young, old, whatever - will respond to it.

 

Not to get all uppity, but I've built a career on stuff like this:
http://mgoblog.com/category/tags/picture-pages

and this:
http://mgoblog.com/category/post-type/upon-further-review

...and you need to redefine 'boring.' 90% of newspaper writing is dull, repetitive, unilluminating pap. Teaching someone something about the game they like may be boring to some but is thrilling to others, and on the web it's about being the god of a niche, not the barely-tolerated monopoly content of a metropolis. That's what the kid is getting at. Teach me something, and build a smaller group of loyal diehards.

Also, don't ask the coach to figure it out for you. They're busy. Do it yourself. Build a corpus of knowledge and use that as your barrier to entry.

 

Well, THAT is amazing!

In the 1980s, Van McKenzie, sports ed at the AJC, ran photo strips of the "play of the game." They were crayon drawings by kindergarten kids compared to this. Van's idea was ahead of the technology curve. No longer. Now imagine if your website had this every Sunday or Monday breaking down the plays that turned the game. Damn!

 

It may be the insomnia talking, but Brian Cook's site is the most fantastic thing I have ever read on the Internet.

 

No disrespect intended to the sainted Van, but these graphic breakdowns have been done since people could publish pictures with words. You could look it up.

And that Michigan site? It's just an obsessed fanboi tossing around jargon, which is why he still has a page where he begs for money.

 

Never meant that the photo strip was Van's original creation -- he just did it bigger and better than I'd seen it done, 2 photographers shooting from upstairs the entire game for a full page....

I know nothing about the Michigan website or about its operator other than the stuff is intelligently presented and what it does could be translated into a mainstream website at great profit (to the readers/users at least).

 

I imagine that at least something of what irritates coaches about the media is the perception that we're always digging for the cheap controversy or quote rather than attempting to understand the intricacies of the game (and I count myself as guilty as the next guy of this - often a concession to the almighty power of the pressing deadline). I know this was always one of Bob Knight's big gripes.

See, they think the game is damned interesting, inherently, without the accompanying soap operas to make it accessible to the masses. I'm sure sometimes they wonder: "Do these guys even like football?"