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

I zeroed in on that too, Pete. If Enright and his fanboi henchmen want to bring it, I say, "Game on."

We'll see how valuable his website is when advertisers figure out that it's Pravda for UConn.

 

All fans want is shiny, happy coverage?

So when LSU fucks up its time management on a last-minute drive, thwarting an attempt at a game-winning Field Goal, people aren't going to want to read about it?

And the school's web site is going to do a thorough job of covering that angle of the story? They are going to have somebody asking Les Miles 10 different questions about what, exactly, happened? They are going to have a columnist chiming in on what went wrong, and who should be held responsible?

Or are they going to publish a story that runs under the headline, "LSU loses heartbreaker"?

If colleges did it the right way, they could have a lot of success with it. But the right way is doing it the way MLB.com does it -- in other words, fooling people into believing that the coverage isn't affected by the fact that it is sponsored by the college. MLB.com does a fine job of covering the day-to-day. They will write critical game stories, and quote the controversial words of players, and report potential hirings and firings -- all things that fans want to read. In doing so, they are able to get people to read the happy horseshit stories about charitable endeavors and the like, and they are able to gloss over the fact that they'll never produce a truly hard-hitting investigative package.

But colleges are a different beast, for a number of different reasons:

First, colleges are much more thin-skinned than the pros, and there's no shot in hell that Jim Calhoun is going to put up with being grilled by a web site writer who later in the night will be riding the team plane with him.

Second, there are so many different political factions at work within an institution. Sure, for the majority of the season, the party line will remain fairly consistent. But what about the end of the year, when the boosters want the coach gone, and the coach wants to stay, and the institution is secretly interviewing candidates for the job, and the Presidnet and the Athletic Director differ on their views for the future. At that point, whose point of view winds up on the web site?

Third, in college sports, the type of stories that the University is looking to kill aren't stories that are going to be controlled by tighter access. SIDs like this UConn guy don't understand how good they have it. Access is already ridiculously limited, but there is enough of it to provide many D1 beat reporters with just enough information that they don't feel pressure to expand their network of sources to the outliers, where many of the real "hard" stories lie.

Go ahead. Eliminate all access. Then we'll see what happens. Instead of spending the day sitting in a media room transcribing quotes that were uttered in a vacuum, reporters will be out finding ways to connect with people who the University cannot control. Frankly, the result would probably be opposite of what the University intended: It would force newspapers to be better reporters. It would force you to develop relationships with the families of every kid on scholarship, with high school coaches, with AAU coaches, with former coaches and personnel at that University.

Really, what does access get us, anyway? It gets us canned quotes that 95 percent of the time do not reflect the true feelings of the person who uttered them. I can write an analytical game story about LSU blowing its football game without quotes from Les Miles, and I can probably write it more truthfully, because I won't have to quote him telling me things that are either meaningless cliches or downright untrue.

I'd say close to 100 percent of the "negative" stories broken about college sports originate with sources that the University can not control, so bringing all "coverage" in-house would not eliminate this problem. For the most part, access allows reporters to see the human sides of players and coaches, which is then translated into the coverage. Sure, the school web site can still be the venue where people ready about the star quarterback overcoming his troubled childhood. But the reason such stories are so widely read in newspapers is that newspapers generally do a tremendous job of critically covering the day-to-day ins-and-outs of the program, bringing people back each day to read. If there is no critical coverage on the web site, and all it turn into is a bunch of game stories, vanilla sidebars, and feel-good stories, people aren't going to read.

Again, colleges could do it. The problem is, most colleges think "critical" coverage is the same thing as "negative" coverage.

 

Hip hip, hooray!
Hip hip, hooray!
Hip hip, hooray!

 

Pretty good post, daemon.
Well, you have to get a credential or ticket to get into the game to do any reporting at all. I guess you could buy a ticket and then go interview parents, etc., and get them to criticize the coach/athletic director, etc.

I think colleges should just steal the best beat writers from the newspapers, pay the person 50 to 75,000 which most people would take in this environment, and tell that person to cover the team as he/she normally would with the exception of being critical.
Most game stories and features and sidebars are not critical now.
A good beat reporter could tone it down a bit, cover the colleges in a way the website will actually compete with the daily newspaper and the reporter could do it in a way he/she is not completely prostituting himself/herself.

From what I can tell, few colleges have done so, yet. Having student interns write their stories isn't working. Stealing some beat writers would work.

 

Anybody who honestly believes readers only want the softball stuff is not paying attention.

 

Dude, they don't need to READ about it. They've already produced dozens of pages of discussion on a message board about it by the time the first write-thru hits the web, never mind by the time the dead tree edition hits the stoop. They no longer need us to generate or drive discussion. Wish it wasn't true, but it is.

As for fans harping on the negative, it's OK when they do it, b/c they're just passionate. It's not OK when the writers do it, b/c they're just angry suckwad journalists with no clue and no ethics and an ax to grind with the coach for not providing regular access/scolding reporters for asking dumb questions/etc etc etc.

 

BYH, where do the coaches' and players' comments being discussed in those threads come from?

 

The papers (for now). Doesn't change the fact that by the time they get around to talking about what the players and coaches have said, the threads are dozens of pages deep.

If you don't think the fans could survive just fine without us, you're still living in 2003.

 

Dozens of pages deep, all talking about, if the paper has done its job, the story in its publication, be it web or print.

Survive without us? Sure they would. I could survive, however, without a lot of things, like Guinness beer or dark chocolate. But I'd sure hate to lose them.

Fans will always want the kind of reporting newspapers provide. That will never change. Ever.
Exactly how that information is provided, obviously, is the big question right now. But whether readers want that information is not.

 

I guess we'll agree to disagree. I just see fans being able to generate that information on their own now, and any holes can be filled in by the proliferation of rah-rah Rivals and Scout sites (I know, I know...not all are rah-rah entities. But enough are). I hate to believe that's the case, but it is.

And as noted earlier, how much real information is revealed in these pressers? Practices are by and large closed, so Joe Blow Fan has just as much of an idea as you or I if Stud QB is seeing fewer reps than Backup QB. But they can generate 12 pages of discussion on why Backup QB SHOULD be seeing more reps.

I don't see fans of ANY team--collegiate or professional--seeking out information that puts their team in a bad light. Almost without fail, fans believe such coverage is an example of bad journalism perpetuated by someone who wants to bury the U. or local pro team. I firmly believe they'll be far happier with propaganda being shoveled down their throats and that they would not only miss the mass media if it expired but would dance on its grave.

 

C'mon, BYH. You don't think TT fans are eating up the Leach stuff faster than it can possibly be thrown at their pie holes right now?

Yeah, they often bitch about it.
But they read it. Every single word. They read it exponentially more than the 60-10 blowouts.

 

The people who only seek "good" coverage are always the first ones who complain about why we are covering a story up to protect an athlete.

It's like readers who say that there is too much bad news in the A section, but call up to complain about some branch of government that isn't taking care of a problem they have.