Plain Dealer Indians writers will only cover "select" road trips

Yeah, it depends on how many they do, but I'm sure there will be some features and other stuff mixed it in to keep them somewhat busy. We would only skip a few a year, so the writer would just get some days off and not build up so many days to take in the summer.

 

This isn't new. It's been happening for years.

 

Tons of papers write gamers off the TV. They'll watch, then call the PR guy and do postgame interviews through the PR guy's cellphone. I've lost some good freelance gigs recently because of that.

 

You can usually spot them from a mile away, too.

Which makes it even more pathetic when some "editors" think no one can tell the difference.

 

Is it that no one can tell the difference?

Or is it that the difference doesn't show up in any tangible way? The bottom line, I mean.

It's a horrible sign of the business, without a doubt. But the business is horrible. Sending a beat writer with the Indians doesn't make the business less horrible.

I would also imagine this is in large part because they are storing up for a long Cavs playoff run.

 

Readers know the difference. That's why with every cut, you have less customers. If cuts didn't affect the bottom line adversely, they would stop at some point. They haven't stopped. The people who own and run American newspapers are Barney Fifes playing at being robber barons. If some laid off copy editor goes postal with a MAC-10 at some industry gathering, it's only justice.

 

Almost nobody staffed Wilt's 100-point game.. We're just regressing back to the mean. The go-everywhere, staff-everything days of the 80s and 90s are the exception, not the rule.

 

The loss of customers -- by the tens of thousands -- started way, way, way before the loss of content.

 

That's an interesting point.

And, as I've talked about on here before, it's pretty understandable why sports travel is the first thing to go. It's expensive. It's not really news. And information is so plentiful nowadays, there isn't nearly the same return on investment in being on the road that there used to be. Forget about money. But time-wise, there isn't the same return on investment. As I recently read somewhere, and it makes some sense to think about it this way: When teams are hiring media people, they aren't hiring beat writers from newspapers. They're hiring analysts at sites like Hardball Times and Baseball Prospectus. I wouldn't go so far as to say they've made beat writers obsolete, but the embarrassment of riches that is readily available baseball information has made travel a luxury. It might make home coverage a luxury eventually, as well.

 

Yeah, I'd expect a lot more decisions like this in the near future.

What does it cost to send a beat writer on the road for a full season -- $30K? $40K? More?

It isn't possible to justify that expense in business terms.

 

Does a Cleveland TV station travel to Sacramento with the Cavaliers?

Why should the newspaper?

 

I think the argument always was if something huge happened while you weren't there, and the national sites were all over it and you didn't have it, you looked bad. If Bron punches Tyronn Lue in Sacramento (extreme example, I know), that's a tough story to chase over the phone. There's always the arguments about the relationships you form by always being there, but those have been taken down a peg due to the way access has been cut across the board.

But when you weigh that against declining revenue, and with baseball especially, considering the expense, it gets harder and harder to justify the travel. What would you rather have? More employees or the ability to cover the Indians in Anaheim? I think the very biggest papers (Washington Post, Globe, NY papers) will be immune. But not so much the Clevelands, Atlantas and Kansas Citys of the world.