New York Times sports reporting

Boom, Frank, 21 -- I appreciate the candor and insight; Let's see, I am an outsider who parachutes in, without any industry insight or intelligence, and is looking for a job covering the Dolphins. Please look at the post that started this, where I came out of the closet.
Again, personal attacks aren't going to save the business. Ideas will. This is an exciting time in the business; any time an industry gets its butt handed to it, it's an opportunity for real change, innovation, and a true vetting of the work force. The days of the be-everything-to everybody publication are over; it's all about hyperlocal, niches, and giving consumers something they can't get anywhere else.

Frank, what niche businesses have you tried, and failed? For instance before Jon Heyman took the job at CNN/SI, I was going to start a web site with him. I ran a proforma based on the number of paid subscribers we'd attain, labor costs, and projected ad revenue. The goals were to deliver the most insightful ad be first with information for fantasy baseball players, as well as coming up with free agent and trade news faster and better than say, 80 percent of baseball writers in local markets. On top of that, we'd serve a niche in which baseball fans could ask questions of Jon whenever a trade, or news broke.

Would it work? Who knows? We'd definitely be cash-flow positive, if we didn't include our labor. We might have made a $1 million; we may have lost time; however, doing this would establish his value. It was a great exercise, to go through. Jon isn't a risk taker, so he took the job with SI. I don't blame him.

I'd be happy to post my resume, if it'd do anything, to get some people off their butts, stop whining and sniping, and start offering ideas and solutions. For too many years, we've been knocking down ideas, and using defense mechanisms like criticizing spelling, grammar, or whatever -- and ignoring the bigger picture.

Now, this frame of mind is coming back to haunt everyone, and put thousands of journalists on the dole.

Frank, 21, and Boom, God has blessed me with a background, the opportunity, and most importantly, the gift of working alongside people such as Tom Jolly, Kevi n Keeshan, the news director at KGO-TV, Don Skwar, Vince Doria, and my current boss Dylan Cohen, head of international media sales at Bloomberg. I've gotten to help and pick the brains of the new editor of the LAT, Russ Stanton, and great/tireless reporters such as Heyman, Joel Sherman, and too many others I won't mention. I've traveled the country for the past three years, talking to hundreds of editors and publishers.

At 44, my professional career is complete; I just switched jobs at Bloomberg so I could tutor a 22-year old to take my job in a year. Now it's time to give back. I care more about this business and getting people to succeed more than just about anyone I know.

Like many of you have said: I think it's time this thread is put to bed. No matter what happens, though, I'll never stop complimenting people like Tom Jolly, and others who give a damn--or offering new ideas.

Thanks for your time.
Scott

 

Is that the same Jon Heyman that wrote lengthy SI story a few months back about Brian Mcnamee and how he is being unfairly implicated in steroids scandal?

 

Just about every paper has them. And there's nothing wrong with that. Having niche publications can help the company's bottom line, but it has NOTHING to do with saving the actual newspaper, which is the goal of people here. Just because the local monthly luxury magazine makes money or the weekly newsprint product for parents makes money does not mean the company will not slice jobs out of the daily's newsroom. The daily still needs to make a 20 percent profit margin no matter how well the niche pubs do. And turning the daily into a product that serves a few niches isn't going to save those jobs, either. It will just kill it faster.

 

Has anyone spoke with Bono. Perhaps a world wide concert would help. It saved the Midwest farms you know.

 

In smaller markets, the niche pubs can hurt the daily. There is only so much advertising money in the market, and the niche pub siphons off (more expensive) ads from the daily and into the niche. Of course, they may feel the need to do it anyway to prevent someone else from creating a niche product. But it is still no solution to the daily's problems.

 

I know Frank Deford personally.

 

Frank Would you bear with me for just a second here.
What if - and believe me this is hypothetical - but what if you were offered some kind of a stock option equity sharing program. Would that do anything for you?

 

I gave virtually the same address as the valedictorian at Deltona Upstairs Sportswriters College last year. That night the ghost of Grantland Rice appeared at the foot of my bed and asked why he hadn't been mentioned. "Young man," he said, "young man, if I were Bronko Nagurski - and not dead on top of it - I'd throttle you." I woke with a terrible start in a tangle of sheets. Since then, I've been looking for an opening, any opening at all, in the cutlery business.

 

I don't mean to bash the idea, but how would the site have been different from, say, espn.com, yahoo, sportsline, mlb.com, etc., not to mention the local papers' sites?

 

Mr.ScottNewman,

OK, lemme first admit that I couldn't slog my way through the entire four pages this thread currently has -- I just couldn't!
But, I wanted to respond to your original post. If someone has already made this point, I apologize.

I have all the respect for what the N.Y. Times did this week and I think it's great you wanted to recognize the work it did.
But, then you went on to condemn so many other papers about the way they execute their jobs and I just needed to get this off my chest.
What you described were the ideal working conditions of a newsroom.
However, due to the state of the industry, very few newspapers offer their reporters ideal conditions in which to do their work. Let's take my situation for instance.
When I came up, our sports department had a Prep Editor, a complement of writers and 3-4 clerks who would answer the prep calls and write roundups/compile agate. Our Prep Editor would be working the phones by calling sources, talking to coaches and generally do exactly what you described.
Flash forward 10 years and we have a Prep Editor who is always on the phone. No, not making calls. TAKING calls. He writes the roundups and compiles agate. He would write an occasional feature story or gamer, but just didn't have the time to pursue anything with depth. There were no prep clerks anymore. Instead, he had two writers who would go out and cover games. The "big sports" (i.e. Football, Basketball, Baseball) received all the love, while there was little manpower left to properly cover the rest of the sports.
Does it suck? Yes, big time. But it's the reality of the business.
Does it mean that the Prep Editor at this paper has less knowledge of how to do his job than his counterpart at the Times? I don't think so. It just means that the Times guy isn't as bogged down by the dirty details of putting a paper out every day and has more time to work his sources and do these great stories.

I think a lot of people out there deserve credit for what they're doing. But instead of blaming the worker for what they're not doing, maybe you should look at how that worker is being affected by the decline of the industry.

 

Newman

I'd love to parse your entries but I've got to go bury some leads and avoid people calling me up with important stories -- Tom Jolly might have had a good week but your much-trumpeted association with him has let air out of the balloons along the parade route. With friends like -- etc

YD&OHS, etc

 

Never blame others! Vet yourself before your wreck yourself! Innovate more with less! Hyperlocal insight - but outside the box! Niches! Solutions! Going forward! Moving on up! To the East Side! And always twirling, twirling, twirling! I saw the back of Lupica's head in a press box once!