Sporting News leaves St. Louis

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps so you might learn something about SPORTS.
What a novel concept.

 

You're crazy.

 

I get the feeling you would've called him crazy, even if he didn't invite it on himself. I would've.

 

I've barely read an issue of TSN in 15 years or so, but that's a function of free time, not a statement on current publication.

What I do remember is as a kid growing up in the late '60s and early '70s, and poring over every issue. Unlike most TSN jun kies in those days, I didn't spend hours studying the boxscores, because they were a week to 10 days old and I had already seen them. But I loved reading Leonard Koppett, Dick Young, Joe Falls, Jerome Holtzman, etc. and all of the team by team filings and notes.

In the summer, I would pitch the pup tent in the backyard, curl up in my sleeping bag and with a flashlight read TSN cover to cover. I lived in a rural New England community and had nowhere near the newspaper/media access that big-city folks had, so TSN---and SI to some degree---were my connections to the big world "out there."

I suspect with John Rawlings running the show the last 20 years, it was still a topnotch product.

 

That was their reason for being for a long time: If you were a Phillies fan in Butte, Montana, TSN would deliver your weekly jolt of Phillies news. The Internet rendered that obsolete, which I suspect is a factor in their lack of success in selling ads. There must be a suspicion that people who still get TSN are Net illiterate rubes and seniors, because they could certainly get better/fresher information online.

If you look at '60s era issues of TSN, which you can do here:

http://www.paperofrecord.com/

you'll be amazed to see that sometimes they did two or three separate stories on each MLB team in the <i>offseason.</i>

TSN's biggest failure has been its inability to create a buzz about any content. They sometimes get a rise out of the "what's the best sports town" annual survey, but otherwise how often do you see TSN content being cited?

 

Hell, you can look at 1880s era issues of TSN at www.paperofrecord.com.

It's free to sign up for, too. Great resource.

 

TSN gets some positive ink:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/jon-friedmans-media-web-three/story.aspx?guid=%7B1490F1B2%2D295E%2D472F%2DAB01%2D544E43A3BC0E%7D&dist=hplatest#comments

 

Does this mean that Stan Musial drops out of the Top 10 Greatest Players list?

 

Good source says something may be imminent with a new editor. I think I know who it is but not certain enough to post.

 

Mr. Scott Newman, friend of Tom Jolly?

 

When I was a kid in the 60s, I loved to read every page of the Sporting News. A lof of stuff they did now would seem kind of meaningless. Many of the stories were pretty much rewriten local stuff, and they were one-source pieces which were probably done pretty quickly. I didn't know this or realize this when I was a kid - I just loved to read everything I could about baseball.

I think you can go back to the 1970s and say the Sporting News was becoming dated. People started to expect more out of sports journalism, and the Sporting News was resistant to change.

They also published a trade paper, Sporting Goods News. I understood that way back, that was a very profitable publication.