What will sports journalism look like in 10 years?

What it boils down to is understanding what is really important to the local readership.

Where I currently live, there is a community of about 7,000 people that deeply cares about its high school sports, to the point that the cross country team gets a big banner for the camp the team sets up at meets. There's a weekly in that community, so yes, the weekly should focus on the high school sports because it's what the readers are interested in.

That doesn't mean every local paper should focus on that. Chicago is not comparable to the community I just described, so the local coverage shouldn't be the same.

My earlier remarks were directed more at the corporations that have taken over so many of these smaller papers and think every Podunk out there is interchangeable... and even think Podunk is no different from Mini-Metropolis.

 

I can't speak for other states, but I could see TV news stations becoming the place to go.
One local station hired a digital guy and he's brilliant. He did so well they gave him a reporter, who's also really good. They're breaking stories left and right, keeping pace with the ProJo.
Sports doesn't seem to be a high priority though. None of the TV stations really do stories that aren't being covered elsewhere.
In RI, I can't see local sports going away. While everyone says "the only people who care are the parents." Well, the thing is that market is always there. School populations may go up and down, but a basketball roster is always filled and there are always enough kids to field a football team.
With people more than willing to shell out money for NetFlix, Hulu and everything else, I would be surprised if papers didn't completely stop printing and just going to on-line subscriptions in 10 years.

 

Wow, I guess I'm not on here enough to be aware of this vendetta. But seriously, chill dude. Nothing's worth getting that upset over.

And for the record, I don't hate his guts, and I if I did, it would have nothing to do with allegedly driving away "national writers" as if I should be so lucky to bask in their presence.

 

What makes the lack of interest in local high school coverage so scary is when you work in a market that doesn't have anything else. Where I worked, if it's not high schools it's the junior college, which didn't have football. The men's hoops team was a draw most of the time, but that's maybe five months out of the year. Interest in the local juco beyond the men's hoops team was non-existent.

So, what does a staff of three or four cover if not local high schools? Nothing. Either management stays in a holding pattern, allowing staff to cover whatever, waiting for reporters to leave, and never replacing the positions (what's currently happening) ... or lay off all but a sports editor to cover the occasional game and force the copy desk to put together whatever section is left when the editor is reporting and out of the office (an extreme solution, but I wouldn't underestimate management to consider it).

 

The problem with high schools is everyone only cares about their own. So in cities, high school coverage is only hitting a small percentage of the readership per game.

 

Is there a solution to that?

 

Yeah.

Don't cover high school sports.

 

The latter half seems to be what's happened with my shop. Our sports editor left for another job, and the word is that "maybe" we'll get another sports guy before football season. In the meantime, we've gone from a three-man sports staff a little over a year ago to a one-man staff now (I'm the one man).
I'm doing pages three or four days a week and seemingly doing something -- even if it's writing stories at home -- six or seven days a week. The news reporters have been covering some games to help out, and they and the production staff are doing pages when I'm not there. Of course, that adds to their already overloaded schedule, but I'm not sure management realizes it or cares. Makes me wonder if sports is viewed as a luxury item.

 

Here's the problem with not covering high schools, using Boston as an examples. Boston area has over 100 high schools. Maybe each one totals a small number of readers. But if you piss them all off at once, that's a lot of unhappy customers.