The National Sports Daily

Mascara Falls..... love that title

 

Oh...they'll tell you about it...then tell you about it...then, just when you're tired, they'll tell you about it...

 

"the national" loved itself. just ask anyone who worked there.

the public? not so much. and as someone in the biz, there was nothing about it that ever made it a must-read.

sorry to ruin the romanticism. but to me, it never measured up to being the product the looooong list of major players would lead you to believe it was.

and no, this isn't about jealousy. "the national," in theory, should've been great benefit to all of us. but it just wasn't. the sum of the parts just never added up for me.

 

I'm going to have to disagree on that one. "The National" was all that, and I wish it was around to this day.

 

People in the business loved it because it was the realization of all those "who would be on your dream staff" discussions.

The public didn't care that much about it. You watch games, you maybe attend games, you watch Sportscenter, you read your local paper....sooner or later, you have to devote some time to selling insurance or fighting fires to make your living.

 

Actually, the public did care about it. The problem was that they couldn't find it, or they couldn't be sure it was going to be there from one day to the next when they did find it.

 

I read almost every issue. I read it for specific writers, but I don't think the average reader has that kind of brand loyalty. I also read five or six other dailies at the time; I don't think the average reader does that, either.

Unless you're totally sicko, you want one-stop shopping. You don't want to go here for the sports scores, another place for great sports writing, a third place for national and international news, a fourth place for local news. And I don't think the Internet has changed that.

 

Distribution, or lack of, killed it ... But it was great daily. I have the complete run in my den. And for many years, there was an empty vender box on a street corner in Sacramento. I wanted to steal it in the worst way ...

 

I'd never been in a situation like that before or since, where you would go to your local convenience store in the morning and there was maybe a 45% chance that the newspaper would be there. That was about the batting average where I was.

If that was the case elsewhere ... and everything I've heard indicates it was ... that's a very, very tough position from which to build success.

 

there was a small grocery store across the street from where I lived that carried it

but somehow it carried the edition from a city 140 miles away and not the one 12 miles away

never figured that out

but the local columnist who wrote for the edition I could get > the local columnist who wrote for the edition I couldn't get, so it was all good

 

Yeah, distribution sucked (should have been a clue that maybe this wasn't the most cogent business plan?) but it's too easy to pin it on that.

On this board, it's natural it would be a recurring topic. But does any of that resonate with people who are not in the business or don't have enough interest in the process to visit a site called sportsjournalists? Seriously doubt it. One of SI's selling points to advertisers has always been that readers keep the magazine until the next issue arrives, therefore there are many opportunities for their ad to be seen. The National was an issue of SI that was going to be replaced every 24 hours.

I give Frank Deford credit for finding backers who made it come to life for a brief time, but the concept was doomed, even if it had a great distribution network.

 

It was too much for most people to read on a daily basis. Heck, I sometimes don't get all the way through my SI before the next one arrives.