New newspaper cutbacks thread

I saw this somewhere else today, and god help me, it might have been here, but I think it merits a thread.

The L.A. Times is cutting most road coverage of the Kings and Ducks, and making Helene Elliott (recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame) a general columnist and cutting out her weekly NHL column (although she'll still write about the NHL a lot).

So the L.A. Times won't cover the L.A. Kings on the road.

Maybe we should just give up these threads as too depressing, but it's really important stuff these days.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/07/times_cuts_back_on_hockey.html

Sadly, Roderick writes: "this marks a pretty sharp swerve in the road. Beat writers might still go along when news of a feature angle warrants, but this makes the Times more like the smaller papers around town."

 

Re: New hockey coverage thread

this kind of thing is happening all over the continent.
Sports is heavy on the expenditure side of the ledger.

 

Sometimes I think we should all just go back to school, learn a second career and get the fuck out of this business before it falls in on itself.

But the bottom line is, despite hockey being a good game, the NHL lockout killed the sport's national popularity and put it below other sports on the totem pole. I'm sure the Times would still cover the Kings/Ducks if they went to the postseason.

On another related note, OC Register has to be salivating at the thought of having the Ducks all to themselves. We'll see how it plays out.

 

I think its at least time to be considering a backup plan. I've never seen an industry so seemingly hell-bent on screwing itself. Every move we make seems to make us less and less relevant.

 

Well, I'd apologize for the d_b, but this is definitely a journalism topic.

 

To those that say "it's only hockey" .. what happens when it is college basketball or football, the NBA, MLB, etc. Hell, I'm surprised more of publishers - who have no idea who much it helps to be with a team all the time, not just for game stories - points out that AP is everywhere, so why send out a beat writer?

I sure as hell hope it doesn't come to that, but to meet unrealistic profit margins (combined with insane spending for printing presses), I wouldn't be shocked to see more papers do this.

 

It's only hockey.

 

Wait 'til it happens with MLB and NFL. I bet you won' post "It's only baseball" or "It's only football."

 

You think they care if it "helps" to be with a team? How is that attracting new readers or adding to the bottom line?

Seriously, the only way to keep covering a beat like a beat is to start kicking ass and doing stories you aren't doing now or blog the crap out of the team.

 

It won't happen with either of those sports as long as they have the followings they have now. Hockey's following has dwindled because of its terrible TV contract. If you don't have a team in your area, you don't see the NHL. I love watching hockey, but it's so far out of mind during the regular season that you tend to forget about it.

The NFL and MLB are such different animals than hockey ... look at Sports Illustrated. Every week during the deadest part of the NFL year, they've had a story on the NFL. That's how much of an appetite our readership has for it. That voracity just doesn't exist with the NHL and the general sporting public.

So, sorry, but "it's only hockey."