Why do the national media now own sports scoops?

Central to the main discussion: Define what kind of news matters enough to be scooped.

A lot of it boils down to who's gonna tell who what. If a college coach A gets fired, that coach might text Coach B at a different school, who knows and texts National Reporter A, who gets the news and reports it. Is that the reporter's inherent ability as a reporter, or merely a product of that reporter's standing? It could be either, but I suspect the latter.

Another issue: National audiences love to read about the misery of others, but a local audience tends to love Dear Old U a little more than that. So negativity comes with more risk, and also the consequence of the coach getting to literally face his accuser, if you will.

Facing people can be hard. Nobody enjoys getting bawled out. Especially when you might have, say, 6 other local competitors who won't back you up and generally wouldn't mind if you got the freeze out from the coach. Since national guys, with only a few exceptions, all seem to love each other to a great degree -- I gauge this by all the metaphorical back-slapping and beer-buying that goes on in social media, so maybe I'm off -- a coach isn't likely to have as many, or even any, allies for taking on a reporter.

It's hard to have an objective discussion on this, because, to some extent, many of our worldviews include the clause of "well, my perspective needs to be validated, as does my position."

Finally, there's just the time element involved. ESPN can run a AP gamer or a AP feature on a player while allocating resources for the big-picture NCAA scandal. The local paper would have egg on its face. So now you have a beat writer having pull double or triple duty, in some cases, with an editor still asking for the same old, rote, boring advances and 9-inch notebooks. And the preps can't come over and help because he's preps and the second NBA guy can't not do his 11-inch sidebar and so on.

Which is why having a really good editor (s) is key for local organizations. You can't be a slave to the calendar, especially on shit no one reads. Editors sometimes fail to see that pouring time into something that will get a ton of readers and praise is more useful than doing the same old thing and playing catchup because nobody can break out of their reporting routine.

 

Local beat reporters also have to weigh the issue of "burning the locals" in reporting a big story or in "nosing around" in speaking to people they know very well. Probably why someone like Sara Ganim left PA and joined CNN after the Paterno story.

 

You think that's why she left? She'd exhausted her sources? And not -- just grasping at straws here -- that it was a better job with better pay and more resources?

 

The point being that someone who works at a small local publication and writes a huge story about something that affects a large swath of people is going to feel hemmed in afterwards. She went to CNN, yes, but she probably would have wanted to get the eff out of Dodge anyway and go someplace else -- not necessarily bigger, just different.

 

That's my takeaway as well. And that's my attitude toward the issue. From what I have observed, the bigger the media outlet, the more people want to be seen or noticed by said outlet.
This doesn't just apply to pro level or college sports, either. It can be from NFL down to the local school board. At least in markets I've been, even local TV people are seen as celebrities. Why? Because they are on TV.
When I was in Iowa, I was at a small daily covering sports. I couldn't get access to Danica Patrick for a preview. Why? My paper was too small. Yes, one question asked when I tried to get access was circulation size. If I was from a bigger paper in the area or TV station, I know I would have gotten the access. Sucks, but that's the way the game is played. My guess is it's always been that way, but especially these days with such a wide discrepancy between local shops and the number of "big league" media.

 

Thank you, Knute Rockne.

 

I think it's all relative. Ask the weekly guys why the coaches genuflect when the big daily shows up at one of their games. But I agree with the idea that it is agents and other info brokers who would rather have a few well-trusted reporters on the national level to deal with than 30 or 50 or whatever.
Also, national reporters are also the last to find out about shady doings going on for the local team so when bad news is dug up by a local (see Penn State), you'll see Big Time Sports Team go to a national outlet to curry favor and spin the story their way.

 

I can't even figure out how anyone could think Tony Barnhart wasn't on ESPN. That's where he made his name. That's the reason you know his name. That's why he works for CBS now.

 

Tony "made his name" from working in Greensboro and Atlanta prior to ESPN.

 

PR staffs might give the national guys better access. I doubt they're tipping them off to scoops.