Virus could change sportswriting forever

How the Coronavirus Could Change American Sportswriting Forever

 

Hell, eventually the press boxes will be turned into luxury suites as teams and leagues monetize their own content and shut out independent media.

 

Already happening in NASCAR, as some tracks have replaced largely empty media boxes with paying customers.

 

That's already been done. Media used to get court side seats at NBA and college basketball games; except for a handful of national superstars, everybody's been kicked upstairs into rafter seats.

Plus with the overall decimation of sports staffs everywhere, the total media numbers at games are way, way, way down.

 

Many years ago, Michigan State added skyboxes to Spartan Stadium by cutting the press box by about half

 

Just off the top of my head, in the 80s and 90s, at "regular" football games Michigan and Michigan State (ie, non big rivalry) you'd have probably five people from each Detroit paper, five each from each "hometown" paper (Ann Arbor and Lansing), then one or two each from Flint, Saginaw, Midland, Battle Creek, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Traverse City plus a couple dozen small dailies sending one person each. That adds up to probably about 75 people, swelling over 100 for big games. I'd be shocked if that entire assemblage sends 15 today.

I think the Free Press and Lansing put together send 3 or 4. And I bet they pay full price for everything (game ticket, food, parking).

 

College sports are pretty much like this now. The only way to build relationships is during recruiting. You get cell phone numbers of players and family and hope the connection lasts into their actual playing days.

 

At local Big Time U, the media is still seated courtside. Most of the media sit at the end of the court because TV and radio take up all of the sideline seating, but we're still close.

 

Heck, I quit covering NASCAR eight years ago, and even then the press box was barren. Between papers cutting coverage and all the new media preferring to be in the infield media center, it was like a retirement home up there.

 

Hated covering Carolina basketball, for no other reason than we'd get placed under the pep band, and the damn trombones would drip spit all over my notebooks. I'd have to remind them to clean their spit valves every other song.

 

With all the sports on hiatus, sports sections are going to get a lot thinner
When I got a job in Florida, I called the paper after I had driven in from Marquette
I asked to speak to the sports editor
I was told: “He no longer works here.”
Since he hired me I asked: “Does that mean I do?”
I was assured I had my new job, then learned what happened to him
It was the middle of the baseball strike in 1981 and the staff was writing a column a day about their favorite baseball memories
Well, 30-so days in people had run out of things to write
It was the SE’s turn
He wrote one sentence —This is all I’ve got
It was the headline and the lede
Add the column sig and 18 inches of white space and that was the story
He was gone the next day