The downfall of CBS Sports

Staples?

 

Is that showing promise? I've lost touch on all the latest ways to turn eyeballs into dollars. Maybe it is and it's the answer.

But the whole issue and what CBS has done, that's at heart the reason I (and I'm sure plenty of others) got out -- I couldn't see how the thing was going to make business sense.

 

Part of the problem is the guys with the best followings are choosing to break the news on Twitter, which doesn't pay them a dime.

 

I understand that bosses care that experienced, beat reporters break news. But if they are hiring 20-somethings to slap together what comes their way, they don't care that they are 10 seconds or 10 minutes behind. They don't expect those folks to break news.

Often, though, the content miners are much better (or less concerned with accuracy) at writing headlines that gain clicks, so they will get many more eyeballs on some weak rewrite of someone else's content than the actual breaking story gets.

 

Shouldn't reporters on the front lines pay more attention to the business side? If you think breaking news matters, then so does the bottom line.

 

I don't find it depressing... more like unsettling because of the rapid change. It seems part of the evolutionary process, though.

To understand how the process is evolving, look at your own habits.

For example: I follow pro tennis. Twitter is extremely inefficient for me, for various reasons.

A friend texted me yesterday that Federer was having surgery for an injury suffered the day AFTER losing to Djokovic in the Australian Open semis.

That's crazy. Immediately I thought:

1. Did he really suffer it then, or did he suffer it DURING the match and just not want to say anything?
2. If he did suffer it 1 day after, why was he practicing 1 day after a major tournament that had to have taken a toll on his body? Not plausible.
3. Did he suffer it playing tennis at all? Or was it tripping or horseplay with his kids?
4. Is this (finally) the beginning of the end of his career?

So I really wanted to know WHAT HAPPENED. Went to Google news search. Nada. Just articles written from Federer's Facebook post.

Went to Jon Wertheim's Twitter feed. Wertheim covers tennis for SI and Tennis Channel and wrote a book on Fed. Figured he would know if anyone would.

Wertheim is spread so freaking thin, I had to wade thru a bunch of promotional tweets about his latest book to find his Tweet on Fed, which only reported the fact of the injury.

24 hours later, I'm still looking for information.

The need for information is there.
The want is there.
How is the consumer going to get it?
How is the consumer going to wade through the crap and the noise to get it?
The ones who can figure out (a) how to deliver the content and (b) how to do it efficiently will make the money. I guarantee that.

WriteThinking or someone pointed out that he'd not visited CBS for awhile. I didn't even realize it-- but me either. Could be about 2 years since I've given them a click.

That tells you that the aggregation route maybe lucrative in the short term but incredibly short-sighted and eventually self-defeating.

There are a million aggregators out there. Why would I go to CBS ?

Content IS king and will always be. Information is king.

 

Lugnuts, I respect your opinion, but here's why the whole thing troubles me.

I had that same conversation with someone. Nearly 10 years ago.

That conversation happened 10 years after we started seeing newspaper websites.

We still haven't found out how to monetize our web product. I'm assuming lots of very, very smart people have been trying to figure it out. Their livelihoods, our livelihoods, depend on it.

Ten years ago, we were told video was going to be the salvation. My paper at the time, a good yet small one, was early on that train. Daily newscasts. Reports filled with good interviews and back stopped with some B-roll. What's that helped? I'm not saying video isn't a worthwhile component on many projects, but show me the money.

Maybe a new generation of sales people and creative journalists, a generation that grew up expecting almost everything on the Internet to be free, will be able to solve the issue. I'm not holding my breath.

Yeah, content is king, but no one is paying tribute to the throne.

 

I understand the dilemma and I'm not sure there's a good answer. But the question boils down to what value is there to the company that's paying your check if you break news on Twitter (benefiting Twitter advertisers) under your own handle without a link driving users back to more detailed information/reporting on the company site with company advertisers? Seems negligible.

Heyman, for example, broke all sorts of news on Twitter but his stuff on CBS was never very compelling. He's an excellent reporter but not a particularly good writer. Buster Olney and Ken Rosenthal, on the other hand, are guys who seem to create a good balance. Their well-reported columns are always worth reading and they're closely associated with their company brands.

Also, if Heyman had decided to break news only on CBS would his sources have begun to ignore him? If I'm say, Scott Boras, am I going to feed him information to break on CBS or is my goal to get it out quickly on Twitter?

 

I have no idea how all this works in the digital age of journalism, but if Olney gets a scoop that A-Rod is announcing his retirement on Sunday, could he bang out 5-6 column inches on his phone, send that to the .com, they fire back a link to post to, he tweets the link, editor at the .com creates the page for people to hit.

Twitter feed handled and .com get s a bezillion hits.