What's your Olympic coverage plan?

Actually I forget...I was checking it out when you sent me that link a few months ago. But, it sounded like the publisher keeps some unsavory company and tried to stay in the middle of everything...and not in a good, journalistic sort of way.

It's too bad for you, as well. I seem to remember promising you a place to crash.

 

Love ya, Microville _ absolutely love ya! If you can promise absolutely NO water polo or archery coverage for three weeks, I will sell this urban loft this minute, at a discount, and move to Microville on the spot!! I will bring deli treats!! I will lavish you, M'Ville, with delicacies. Any locale that knows when it's time to put on the pads is my kind of place!!! Down, set, hut and I mean it! (OK, I over-indulged in the exclamation points, but at least I'm man enough to acknowledge that it's truly bad form.)


Look, to have lasted in this business at least two decades, we all had to do enough G.A. to know the difference between a double Arabian off-beam dismount and a triangle and two. We all have done it all. But anyone who has covered (on location) at least five Olympics knows that nothing there beats a Hail Mary at the whistle. Sorry, I know a triple flip from an Axel, a rapid-fire pistol from skeet targets, etc., but I also know where the bread is buttered.

 

I see your summary dismissal of hometown sports and raise you a summary dismissal of 80% of all Olympic coverage.

Period.

 

it's attitudes like this that make sports journalism an oxymoron

 

Why should NBC's ad revenues matter to us?

And, if ad revenues are that important, shouldn't high school football be more important in some areas than the Olympics? After all, lots of papers sell preseason football tabs like crazy. Not so much on the pre-Olympic tab.

 

Don't pay much attention to the WNBA, MLS or open-wheel motor sports either. Guess I should just quit this business altogether.

 

Trading in xenophobia for racism, are we?

 

So it's not about the journalism, it's about the journalist. Fuck the readers, you're working for an audience of one -- yourself. If you give more attention to the Olympics than football in many markets, you're serving something other than the readership. And looking down on them for not following you to the precipice isn't going to help.

 

I know the "polished" journalists among us don't like to hear it, but the Olympics have wildly varying levels of interest among the sports.

The basketball teams, the track & field ... they're going to have great general interest, and we'd be crazy not to give them good play.

But for every marquee sport, there are three secondary sports that simply don't generate a buzz (unless you have a local athlete involved). Archery. Fencing. Field hockey. Badminton. And (ducking) BMX and mountain biking. I even have serious doubts about the interest in swimming, outside of the Phelps and Torres stories. In fact, I have serious doubts about the interest in the Phelps and Torres stories.

The latest news from Podunk High's football practice WILL draw more reader interest than those.

As far as it being the "once-in-every-four-years" moment for that sport? Don't care. It's still a secondary sport, and the two weeks of the Olympiad doesn't change that.

 

People in my area don't even give a shit about the high school swim teams in the area.

Why, oh, why in the hell would we start running stories about swimmers who have no local flavor?

Guess what? We're not.

 

I made no mention of race, pal. Unlike you, race didn't even occur to me

 

go back and read a few of my previous posts
Nowhere did I suggest someone NOT cover the blessed football practices
I just said the editors and reporters should consider expanding theirs - and their readers - horizons and present some of the great stories that come out of any Olympics
Instead, everyone's talking about results - no one cares who wins ping pong.
I don't disagree, but it's the stories and the great reads that should be offered to readers
Instead, everyone thinks their readers don't care - I've heard that for years - and this in an industry which is one of the worst at truly identifying what its customers want

All the editors are insisting they KNOW their market. Bullshit. There's no research to back it up.
they ASSUME this is what their readers want, and I know its based on experience etc., but you really think your readers will protest about a well-written story in the paper because its not about football?

so many small-timers