Bernie Miklasz leaving St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Of all of the people in STL who have or had - I was unaware Bernie had stepped away from his latest show on "pick your revolving sports talk station in STL here" - a sports talk show, being a columnist actually fits the best if you have a show that ends up 4 p.m. For a guy like Bernie (or the late Bryan Burwell), they could talk for 3 hours and their actual "game duties" would be: 20 Rams games, 50 Cardinals games, 5 Blues games, hit Mizzou when they feel like it and that's about it.

Bernie is actually one of the first print-types who is somewhat interesting on the radio. I could see him doing this, writing columns on a website that few will read but keeping his foot in with the NFL franchise.

I think Miklasz's long term play is this: When the Rams leave in a year, him not being tied down with the Post Dispatch will make him a true free-agent for any of the other 30 cities and newspapers that do have an NFL team. He's a creature of the NFL -- I read him during his first stint with Hanifan's Cardinals.

 

Before we had kids, I did the "triple-platform" when I was still in sports. 9 am to noon did sports talk radio with a co-host, 1 to 10:30 pm was a local TV sports anchor and freelanced for a local magazine for $200 a piece. The 18 months I did that were quite lucrative but, once we were about to become parents, I gave up the radio but kept the freelance work.

The radio and TV meshed nicely because, by the time I came into work at the TV station, I already knew what was pressing that day.

 

Please, folks, let's not act like "nobody will read him anymore."

Sure, you'll get more eyes on your work in writing for a newspaper, as opposed to a radio website. (Thinking about my market right now: I am a regular listener of the local radio stations. But I can't recall ever visiting the websites for said stations).

What's different is Bernie has fans; and he has 56,000-plus followers. So, every tweet is seen by tens of thousands of followers. Most of his readers will follow him to the new home of his column, so long as he tweets the links.

 

Twenty Rams' games? Were they sending him to preseason road games during pennant races?

 

A newspaper will get you more eyes, but in the social media era where we're going directly to our readers by grabbing them to click through Twitter/Facebook, et al, you're still going to get eyeballs if you have a following. I chatted with a columnist who did just this a few months back, and he said the lack of a paywall on the TV site and essentially, the lack of deadlines (he could file when he was done, rather than worry about hitting a specific deadline) led to a lot more freedom.

 

Bernie is being replaced by Benjamin Hochman at The Denver Post. Great columnist.
Ben Frederickson (Vols hoops in Knoxville) just announced he's joining the Post Dispatch as an online columnist and reporter.

 

Paging Phil Kaplan in 3... 2... 1...