What will sports journalism look like in 10 years?

I appreciate that.
I just feel you have to be invested in it on some level to really care.
We've heard plenty about newspapers' place as a civic institution but commitment to community hasn't been moving the product.

 

I covered Nancy-Tonya as Nancy was our local heroine, and the presence of the tabloid celebrity media helped keep me sane during the ordeal, because of their disdainful attitude towards the Olympics and sports in general made me laugh.
I covered the 100th Harvard-Yale game for the Phoenix in 1983. My seat in the Yale Bowl press box was between Vogue and Women's Wear Daily!!!

 

When it comes to preps coverage, I think it will be more like this:

Podunk, population 7,500, where Podunk High is what people watch Friday and Saturday nights... yeah, you better focus on preps coverage.

Middleburg, population 25,000, where there's plenty of support for preps but it's not something everybody watches... needs coverage but it may be better to focus on the most popular or successful sports.

Mini-metropolis, population 75,000, where the nearby NFL, MLB and/or NBA team are king and preps has a limited audience... yeah, preps just isn't going to command reader attention, so focus more on box scores and major postseason tournaments.

 

PaperDoll,

We didn't use to "localize" the Derby.
We "covered" the Derby.

Had a writer and a photog go up every day of Derby Week. Notebook, feature, column every day (at least). Sunday after the Derby, most of front page, if not all, was Derby. Set two writers and a photog to Derby. Each writer wrote at least four things.

Now we localize sports wise if we have some sort of owner involvement (had two recently). Although we are close to Louisville, we are NOT horse country. Not many stables over here (more on the Bluegrass Parkway toward Lexington).

Used to cover the Kentucky and Louisville men's basketball teams and football teams quite heavily. Every home game for Louisville. Selected away games for Kentucky. Bowl games for both schools. Conference tourney for UK. NCAA Tourney for both.

Although none of those trips have been recent (last 3-4 years), I went to Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Mexico covering UK or UofL. My boss went to Florida, California and Georgia (was in the Georgia Dome when the tornado hit during the SEC Tourney).

Looking back, financially all of that didn't make much sense (or cents) to the bottom line in terms of readership or advertising.

 

It's a great question, but almost impossible to answer, so much depends on variables that are so far removed, including a) the future of Internet access, b) the future of hardware, c) and, even if all else remains unchanged (ISPs behave, Google/Apple/Amazon don't further alter market for content), the future of online ad sales.

If everything remains unchanged, attrition continues at current rate, I'd guess that in most markets, sports coverage will be viewed as a loss leader, i.e. spending $5,000 to cover two months of spring training is never going to pay for itself, but it could get people onto the site, at which point you are relying on a fleet of $40,000 a year bloggers and reporters to generate enough clicks to subsidize the more expensive content. I can see road NBA coverage completely disappearing. Baseball/NHL perhaps not, because road trips are so long and so much news happens while on the road. Covering anything on the road at night doesn't make a whole lot of sense because you don't have enough time to do anything more than slap a nuts-and-bolts gamer together, which nobody is going to read anyway.

 

As I always have understood it, you don't cover road games for the great content you get from covering the road game. You cover road games because it pays off in access and relationships. I remember the Cubs used to gather together the traveling beat writers for exclusive press conferences, right in front of everybody. At least in baseball, at least in Chicago, if you didn't travel, you weren't considered a "real" writer by either the organizations or your colleagues. But then again, if NOBODY travels, that changes the calculus there.

 

I'm surprised there are so many answers about gamers and box scores.

I'll be surprised if the majority of daily newspapers in existence today exist in 10 years. All these buzz-wordy strategies by various newspaper companies are just window dressing. Every sensible company is just bleeding the last drops of profit out of newspapers. When they can no longer be cut any more, they will be liquidated. I absolutely believe that will happen in the next 10 years for the majority of daily print newspapers.

What that means for sports journalism or journalism in general? We'll find out.

 

It is possible that other large companies will duplicate the ESPN model of separate mini-staffs of local reporters for various markets. News, including sports news, is a commodity with a proven audience. SOMEBODY will create something aimed at that audience. It may not be Name of City Name of Paper, but it will be done.

 

If there's a battle between, say, the Cleveland.com and NOLA.coms of the world (chasing clicks) versus other companies that are pursuing a subscription model, we should be rooting for the former.

Sports delivers clicks. We will always have value in an organization that chases clicks. In my opinion, we have less value in an organization that tries a path of charging for content. There is simply so much free sports content available that it's difficult to compete on that level.

 

I think the changing of prep sports will dictate coverage a great deal. Does football start to go away? Do schools trim the fat and leave non-revenue sports for the clubs to deal with? Will areas with falling populations see school mergers? Will communities start to not really give a shit?

 

I was just talking with a school division yesterday about their building a new football facility, and I did bring up if there was even going to be high school football in 10 years.

But there is always soccer.

And band...

And track...

And field... (

 

As someone who only reports and writes about high school state tournaments on a freelance basis, I've been wondering the same thing: how long will this last? Right now, I'm doing okay. I'm picking up a good amount of games and being paid decently for it. Three papers from different corners of the state use me, but there are also a number of papers that employ zero freelancers. All of these papers are preps heavy, so it's not like the ones who have cut out the freelance budget have bigger things to cover.

But there's more to it than just the financial health of the papers. I also wonder about the communities around the schools. I'm only 32, but even I remember that when I was a kid, going to the high school football game every Friday in the fall was a big deal for the town. The stadiums weren't big, maybe 4,000-5,000 seats, but they were packed. But barely five years ago, I was covering a team that couldn't draw flies to shit. One high school, town of 40,000, a stadium that held a little under 2,000. I never saw it filled. Not in the year the school won a championship, not in the year it lost every game. The AD bemoaned to me a time or two that the gates just weren't what they were years back. One time, I actually counted 100 spectators.

Now, this is obviously all anecdotal for my slice of the earth. But it's where I'm at for now, which means it's all I can really worry about when it comes to wondering how long until another sports editor says, "I don't have a stringer budget anymore." I've certainly heard a past managing editor say, "I went to the game, and there weren't a lot of people there. Why do we need so many guys in sports?"

So, money aside, does it make sense to management to cover a non-essential beat if the community just doesn't seem to care?