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Why do the national media now own sports scoops?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Dick Whitman, Jan 29, 2013.

  1. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Good reporters tend to move to bigger jobs at bigger outlets, and they take their sources with them when they go. Yes, ESPN has more access than most local papers. But if ESPN used less skilled reporters, it would get fewer stories. Same for Yahoo and SI and any other national entity. They hire good people through the sneaky trick of paying them decently, and those people are better able to leverage the superior resources they get as a result.
     
  2. ddickerson28

    ddickerson28 New Member

    Ron, Just curious, how big was the publication you were writing for? Sounds like you're being a little sour, even though you just said you understand guys have to pay their dues.
     
  3. RonClements

    RonClements Well-Known Member

    I covered the Rams for both the Alton Telegraph (about 30,000 circ.) and then CBSSports.com - spending one full season covering the team for both outlets. I took it personally at first, because I didn't know any better, but not sour about it. It was sometimes frustrating, but I also saw the 20-year veteran local reporters get shut down on requests while the national networks and outlets came in and got the red carpet treatment. It is what it is.
     
  4. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    The Chicago media is so mad that Derrick Rose talked to USA Today.

    (Shout out to this thread in the story):

    http://deadspin.com/5984314/the-chicago-media-is-a-little-pissy-because-derrick-rose-gave-his-first-interview-to-usa-today

    Schuster's whining is cringe-inducing. The most valid criticism I heard this week about the Rose-USA Today story was from David Haugh, who said the problem was that it was clear that Derrick Rose answers to Team adidas first, Team Chicago Bulls second. In other words, it would have been equally bothersome had Rose's handlers set up the interview with, say, K.C. Johnson. The problem is that the Bulls were cut out, not that the poor Chicago media were.
     
  5. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Schuster's complaint is hardly "cringe-inducing." He's pissed. I'll bet a lot of them are. Hope they give Rose hell for it. It was a horseshit move.
     
  6. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Cringe-inducing to take it public.

    He's right, of course.

    But his audience is 4,000,000 people who would give up an organ for a Re-Tweet by Derrick Rose. And he's complaining because he wouldn't talk to him first? No way his readers get it. Or care.
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Players being more loyal to their shoe companies than their teams is hardly anything new...

    National guys getting interviews with star players ahead of the beat guys is nothing new either. Yes, it sucks, but it's never going to change.

    There are probably five teams in the NFL where the bulk of the bigger stories aren't broken by national guys and it's the teams that have a GM who doesn't feel the need to talk to the national guys all the time...
     
  8. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Agree completely. His readers don't need to read any of the Chicago papers to get Bulls news. They don't care where they get it...
     
  9. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    I read and hear this a lot. And in some cases, it would be true.

    But in a case like this, it's telling, and I think readers -- no, not the ones who get on comment sections and act like trolls -- would care that Rose talked to local reporters off the record for months, promising a press conference, then ducked out to a national reporter.
     
  10. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Don't let the Bulls media relations people off the hook. Since they're the ones that had the arrangement with Rose and the local media -- don't badger Rose daily for interviews, he'll do a group thing when the time is right -- they needed to educate and instruct the young man that he had an obligation in the deal too. The team's PR staff should have made sure he understood that, when he did do an interview, he would take care of the people who respected his and the team's requests.

    Rose's agents and marketing people still might have gone around the Bulls' PR crew, but if Rose had stopped it by saying, "No, I have to return the favor I've been shown" -- by the folks who invest the most in his coverage in his home market -- the marketing types wouldn't have been able to pull it off.
     
  11. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    As I've had occasion to write for national publications and wire services, along with the Podunk Express-News and have even been asked by media relations people who I was writing for that day as it determined where I would sit on press row, i.e. AP gets 50-yard line on the front row, Podunkia gets relegated to the third row and in the corner, I'm not terribly surprised that media relations staffs are paying more attention to the media outlets.

    It is, after all, the same metric that we as media staffs use to determine coverage and we all kind of sound like the whiny volleyball parents who call to complain.

    We say, "there's not enough general interest to sustain regular coverage of the cross country team or the DIII down the road when compared to the interest in high school football or the giant state school or the local big league team."

    And media relation staffs are saying, "this outlet doesn't have the circulation/penetration to justify us going to that much trouble when compared to the kind of impact we get when featured in a national newspaper or magazine or when featured in a national broadcast."
     
  12. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I don't think that's it at all... The PR guys on most teams are used to saying no to the beat writers... They're not used to saying no to the national guys...
     
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