UConn: Papers? We don't need no stinkin' papers

Not that this is a particularly ground-breaking topic, but Enright is at least discussing the path on which we seem to be headed.

http://apsportseditors.org/newsletter/sids-see-declining-value-in-newspaper-coverage/

 

Make it stop. I want to get off.

 

This is not a surprise. Some of us have been talking about this day coming for years here. As soon as teams began hiring their own "beat writers" for their websites and putting content out on their own, they have been pushing going to their one-stop site for everything. They also generally know that fans are going to view them less skeptically than an "independent" newspaper.

That also allows them to control the story when bad things do happen -- e.g., the Jasper Howard murder, et al.

The next step in this is no longer allowing the traditional media -- e.g., those who "compete" with UConnhuskies.com -- credentials for games (or at least making them pay for access to the stadium).

Small colleges have been using their websites in this manner for a long time, not because they don't need media coverage, but usually because they don't get it. Some do some very creative stuff -- streaming video and the like.

The thing that will kill sports journalism is NOT the fact that we give our product away for free on the web. It's the fact that individual clubs -- especially at the college and pro level -- are competing with us online and generally become the go-to site for a fanboi, who wants slanted, biased, fanboi news (until something bad happens, and they then want "the truth").

If I want to read about my alma mater, I'll read 2 or 3 newspapers online. If the typical fanboi wants to read about them, they'll go to the alma mater's website and the school's Rivals board.

 

The whole story from their website? No.
The whole story from the Ministry of Propaganda's perspective? Yes.

 

Everyone knows the outlook for newspapers, but this SID (and most SIDs for that matter) are living in a dream world thinking that fans will be satisfied getting all their coverage in-house. No hard-hitting analysis, no investigative work, no tough questioning, no original thinking, no recruiting news, no conflict, etc. Plus, everyone he freezes out will be forced to try and dig up dirt on the program on their own rather than being led around like a Shetland pony as any SID would prefer to do.

 

Right now few colleges do very well with their web sites. They will have basics -- schedules, nuts and bolts results stories -- and maybe some frills like an athlete blog or Q&A but they don't do news like recruiting (they really can't), don't do well with anything outside of game covers, and basic advances and they don't tell it like it is.

So if -- for example -- you are a Texas Tech fan. You aren't flocking to the website to see what the latest news is on the Leach suspension.

They can't really give the people what they want.

 

Two vastly different things conflated.

 

One thing that has to be considered in this is that while almost every D1 program has a traveling beat writer for football, very few have beat writers who go on every single trip for basketball.

There are big papers that cover BCS schools who don't make every trip. That's one thing schools have going for them. They can have somebody at every game and write it from that school's perspective (you don't get that guarantee from AP).

 

I love how great the WPI SID touts the college's site is and how it can tell the whole story. I don't need a 20-inch story on why a game time changed. Not many people care about DIII athletics and there is a reason for that.

 

Gotta disagree. Most fans only want to read shiny happy coverage. Anything negative is shit drummed up by the Big Bad Media. Local College is always in the right.

That said, I can't disagree with a word the UConn SID said there, or feel a shred of sympathy for the newspapers that have hastened their demise and made a day like this possible. Of course I feel horribly for the writers still on the sinking ships, but their bosses have turned the paper from essential to irrelevant in the blink of an eye.

 

I'll agree that "[m]ost fans only want to read shiny happy coverage," but I'll submit that what they "want to read" is no determinative of what they actually do read. Most fans, despite what they want, are compelled to read the well-constructed critical stuff -- it's like moths to a flame. They cannot stay away from it. A few of my colleauges have made quite a career for themselves off of this phenomenon. It has been my experience that one of the least effective ways to figure out what people will buy is to ask them what they want.

 

Until the fans turn on the coach, then the Big Bad Media is filled with homers and shills for The Program.

(Of course, some media markets are filled with homers and shills for The Program. But the fans are OK with that during the good times.)