WTF? Tennessean not covering the SEC tournaments

I can see it in six months:

Nineteen major metropolitan newspapers ceased coverage of everything outside their front door, opting instead to use The Associated Press for everything else.
Publishers at these publications indicated they might also use the AP to fill in the gaps on local coverage due to reporters' off days.

 

God forbid a tornado come through town.

It was bad enough they banned fans from the semifinals and finals last year. Now, the press is bailing.

Aw,what the hell, we can all watch it on TV and write it from there, anyway.

 

I thought all the great sports journalists, notably Red Smith, watched games on television and wrote their stories based off that.

Wait, that doesn't sound right. What was I thinking? They wrote their stories after listening to the radio broadcast ...

 

But I thought newspapers were now 24-hour operations because of the web? It's not worth throwing up a gamer, sidebar/column and notes on the web and do a video or blog? If not with the SEC basketball tournament, why ever do it?

 

Every time I hear something like this, I think of that Futurama episode where Hermes takes a vacation at a forced labor camp. The whole time he's at the camp, he keeps making small suggestions to the guards, like bringing in machinery in mine carts. Meanwhile, this one guy with an Australian accent keeps getting more and more work dumped on him.
When Hermes makes his triumphant return from the camp, his wife says, "My husband got that spa running so smoothly that all the work is now done by a single Australian man!"
So, yeah, AP is kind of like that poor Australian guy from Futurama.

 

Carly Simon now writes a blog in Nashville. So, was she singing about Warren Beatty or someone else?

 

Zelmo Beaty!

 

Sure, you can do blogs and sidebars from the office. if you really need quotes --- and I rarely use quotes in blogs, anyway --- you can get them from the SID or school website or off the local broadcast. Those of us in smaller markets with limited travel budgets have been doing it for years.

 

Updating...

Tennessean didn't cover the game at USC(east) the clinched the Vols' SECE regular season championship...the Gannett paper links directly to Scripps' Knoxville News-Sentinel.

Interesting choice, IMO

http://tennessean.com/

 

Call it cooperative journalism. Got a feeling many others will be doing it soon.

 

From a UT/SEC fan's perspective...

this is more reason to avoid The Tennessean when looking for UT coverage. Chris Low had the best coverage of Tennessee sports while on the UT beat. Since he left, fewer articles appear and those rarely have more info than the AP variety. I rarely visit anymore. For what...Joe Biddle's opinion? Ha! David Climer's? I see The Tennessean much like Lousville's C-J. They cover multiple team beats and are a destination point for team coverage. I won't check their site for coverage unless linked from another site.

Knoxville's N-S has great Vol coverage in both volume and content. It's my forst stop for UT coverage. I know as much about the newspaper business as I do about surgery, but it would seem to me that coverage equals webhits equals increased advertising. I know they lost me a long time ago and decisions like this arenm't the type that would woo me back!

Just a reader/non-journalist's opinion.

 

Here in the real world:

Calls from readers protesting the use of AP coverage (pretty heavily rewritten and "enhanced" on the desk) for the SEC women's tourney: Zero.

I did eventually flirt with letting out Ole Miss guy stick around (as did the Clarion-Ledger, and I tip my hat to Rusty and the gang), but the game(s) that really mattered here – the late games with Mississippi State – ultimately didn't finish in time to get anything but a score and an online tease into the first edition, which goes to Starkville.

Meanwhile, our powder is still dry enough to send both beat guys to Tampa.