NASCAR writer Ed Hinton leaves Orlando Sentinel

I'm not exactly talking about NASCAR PR people, but the big boys on high ... you know, the people who made sure that the show "Pit Bull" got yanked from Speed Channel a couple of years ago.

 

Yeah, the next time I visit my doctor I'll ask him if he needs help with his mortgage. You know, in case he didn't invest well and didn't see the day when business wouldn't be as profitable.

 

In the good, old days this was how big-time events like the Masters and the Kentucky Derby rose to prominence. Good, old bribery of the nation's scribes.

 

Yeah, its still alive but barely -- just one writer (Reid Spencer), and most of his stuff appears on SportingNews.com ...

If you want something like that "wire service" to fly, you've got to let publications know how to subscribe ... the family-owned chain of weeklies I work for thought about doing a NASCAR publication as a supplement last year, but I have yet to get a return e-mail from anyone at Sporting News about subscribing to the service ...

 

Thing is, ondeadline, the Triangle readership wants more, more and more of the Triangle ACC schools, not NASCAR. Gerald Martin did a super job on the NASCAR beat back when the N&O was still owned by the Daniels family. McClatchy must have noticed that the readership is on an urban island compared to most of the rest of the state, got rid of it and lived to tell about it.

The Carolina Hurricanes have been picking up serious steam there since moving to Raleigh in '99 and moreso following the run to the Cup finals in '02.

Try doing that in some of the other North Carolina papers and the lynchmob would follow. Try taking Monte Dutton out of Gastonia or David Poole out of Charlotte. My guess is it wouldn't fly for too long.

Back on topic, I can't imagine Lynn Hoppes was dancing in the streets upon hearing that Hinton is gone. But it was probably out of his hands, too.

 

My favorite hugely talented person in this biz.

The stories he tells of Earnhardt driving him around the Carolinas are so fucking classic.

 

This is terribly unfortunate, but it shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Orlando is only following the lead of other papers which have cannibalized their NASCAR beats. As recently as seven or eight years ago, virtually every paper of any size in the region had a writer who staffed double-digit races each season. Orlando, Birmingham, Atlanta, Raleigh, Knoxville, Nashville, Charleston, Greenville, Columbia, St. Petersburg -- writers from papers like that were the backbone of the NASCAR media corps in the early 2000s. Now, those beats have been eliminated or scaled back to almost nothing. With all the travel required and the hiked-up hotel rates, racing is as expensive a beat to cover as any, and that doesn't mesh well with declining revenues. Especially when there are no true "home" teams.

 

Heard today St. Pete has scaled their coverage back to 5 races, meaning two other than Daytona and Homestead.

 

Underwriting travel, etc., by NASCAR is a nice thought but it'll never happen. I think we all understand why.

If you've covered races lately you don't get the impression NASCAR cares about losing beat writers. Most race fans go to Jayski or whatever other website to get their news anyway. Orlando throwing in the towel won't change that.

As an aside, I think a fulltime NASCAR beat is the hardest of any sports beat. Even worse than MLB.

 

Luggy, I love ya but the season's as long as it's always been. Heck, from 1965 to 1981 the season started even earlier with a race at Riverside, Calif., the last weekend of January (the Motor Trend 500, which morphed into the Winston Western 500), two weekends before the Daytona 500.

There was a dip in viewership last year, though. Also in ticket sales, concessions sales and on-track merchandise sales, mostly as a result of the dip in ticket sales.

 

There also were only 29 or 30 races in the olden days. Schedule isn't so much too long as it is overstuffed.