Where have all the golf writers gone?

[Alma]

A piece in Golf Digest about the decline of on-site golf writers:

Where have all the golf writers gone? - Golf Digest

A piece (a little mind-numbing at the start) about why online golf writers stay at home. (Gist: No money in going to the tournaments.)

Where have all the golf writers gone? - Golf Digest

I like golf. I never had great use for most golf writing. Too chummy. It reads vicarious.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

A piece in Golf Digest about the decline of on-site golf writers:

Where have all the golf writers gone? - Golf Digest

A piece (a little mind-numbing at the start) about why online golf writers stay at home. (Gist: No money in going to the tournaments.)

Where have all the golf writers gone? - Golf Digest

I like golf. I never had great use for most golf writing. Too chummy. It reads vicarious.

The thing is, there are no golf writers who don't play golf. Not like the other sports. So there's an innate sympathy for the point of view of the people being covered.

 

[Alma]

The thing is, there are no golf writers who don't play golf. Not like the other sports. So there's an innate sympathy for the point of view of the people being covered.

Perhaps that's it.

Referring to all these millionaires by their first names gets a little old. The level of fawning over Phil Mickelson - who's been caught up in some **** - is odd to me. It also seems, sometimes, the point of golf writing is to sustain the sport of golf, to canonize at every turn. But that happens in tennis somewhat, too.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Everyone involved with golf is aware of the fundamental dilemma of the sport. It's a big business because recreational players need to spend lots of money on equipment, greens fees, golf travel (nobody takes hockey vacations), etc. to pursue their recreation. But the money and time barriers of the sport are what keep it from growing, because time and money are what people lack, especially young adults. Hence the talking the game up aspect of its journalism, such as live broadcasting the Drive, Chip and Putt competition finals. It also accounts for Augusta National letting the finals of a kid's competition be held there. And most of all, it accounts for the obsessive coverage of Tiger Woods, the player deemed responsible for golf's last and possibly growth spurt.

 

[Alma]

I'm not sure why the journalism of the sport needs to be concerned with the sport's ongoing cultural relevance. Golf doesn't need to "boom" to exist.

It's like journalism rooting for or against mandatory minimums laws.

 

[playthrough]

Every big paper (and a lot of mid-sized papers) had a golf writer who would hit the big national events while also providing comprehensive coverage of the one or two weeks when the circus would come to their town. But when the budgets started going south, the first cuts weren't the baseball or football writers, it was the golf writer. You could pull someone else from the staff to cover the PGA Tour at home, and instantly cut those pricey annual trips to the Masters and the U.S. Open. But what you also lose are features on the club pro who's teaching the underprivileged kids, the greenskeepers fighting to keep courses alive in a drought, coverage of the state amateur, etc. Stuff that matters to local golfers. It's a stretch to say the lack of writers has greatly hurt golf's growth, but I think it's somewhere on the list behind cost, time and access. There's simply less awareness of the game at the amateur level.

You could also replace "auto racing" for golf in all of that, too. I've been on the media and PR side there and have watched all the newspaper auto racing writers vanish. Like golf, there's a small army of bloggers now but it's not the same. Not even close.

 

[AD]

tennis in the u.s. has seen an equivalent drop in dedicated writers. the emptiness in the media rooms is astounding. some of this is due to the lack of american players -- especially male. but the mean fact is, it is a niche sport. the tennis boom of the '70s fooled tennis folk into thinking they could be part of the major sport discussion, and they're constantly bemoaning that they're not. but the boom was the anomaly; today's era is the rule. it's a minor (yet incredibly interesting, oddly socially groundbreaking subculture with quirky personalities rewarded for being quirky, unlike those in pro golf, where the demands of the sport reward a dull steadiness) sport that just so happens to have four glorious events every year that even non-tennis folk pay attention to. the grand slams elevate tennis (again, in the u.s.; around the world it's hugely popular) to a level it doesn't call for the rest of the year.

back to the american player thing: it's overrated. in the 90s, you had sampras and agassi, with courier and chang and -- later -- the williams sisters and lindsay davenport all waving the flag. the sport didn't take off then, either.

 

[playthrough]

I'm not sure why the journalism of the sport needs to be concerned with the sport's ongoing cultural relevance. Golf doesn't need to "boom" to exist.

It's like journalism rooting for or against mandatory minimums laws.

But one could argue that it does need to "boom" to keep a certain number of journalists employed. So those journalists write about the state of the game more than ever before and the stories often take on a whiff of desperation.

 

[PaperDoll]

Every big paper (and a lot of mid-sized papers) had a golf writer who would hit the big national events while also providing comprehensive coverage of the one or two weeks when the circus would come to their town. But when the budgets started going south, the first cuts weren't the baseball or football writers, it was the golf writer. You could pull someone else from the staff to cover the PGA Tour at home, and instantly cut those pricey annual trips to the Masters and the U.S. Open. But what you also lose are features on the club pro who's teaching the underprivileged kids, the greenskeepers fighting to keep courses alive in a drought, coverage of the state amateur, etc. Stuff that matters to local golfers. It's a stretch to say the lack of writers has greatly hurt golf's growth, but I think it's somewhere on the list behind cost, time and access. There's simply less awareness of the game at the amateur level.

Why would those features disappear without a dedicated golf writer? There are multiple PGA pros who are coaching high school teams, and that feature's coming next month. I have also been pursuing a story on a local PGA-affiliated program which trains kids with special needs to work on golf courses, but it's new and the contacts don't quite have it all together long-term. I did a local story on the PGA's youth team tournament USA Today profiled.

I'm also the one who has been to the county tournaments for the past few years, since my colleagues who actually played and cared about golf are gone.

I don't cover golf. I didn't even cover high school golf until a few weeks ago. But I hope these stories will be interesting and draw eyeballs.

If the analytics don't measure up to the resources invested, pretty much anything can be left by the wayside.

 

[playthrough]

Why would those features disappear without a dedicated golf writer? There are multiple PGA pros who are coaching high school teams, and that feature's coming next month. I have also been pursuing a story on a local PGA-affiliated program which trains kids with special needs to work on golf courses, but it's new and the contacts don't quite have it all together long-term. I did a local story on the PGA's youth team tournament USA Today profiled.

I'm also the one who has been to the county tournaments for the past few years, since my colleagues who actually played and cared about golf are gone.

I don't cover golf. I didn't even cover high school golf until a few weeks ago. But I hope these stories will be interesting and draw eyeballs.

If the analytics don't measure up to the resources invested, pretty much anything can be left by the wayside.

That's a compliment to you and your paper that those stories are still getting covered. But I remember in my old town that the regular golf coverage went out the window when the golf writer was let go. And this was in Florida, where there's just no excuse.

 

[maumann]

Not to add any snark, because I think it's awesome that you're doing local features on PGA Professionals, who are the unsung heroes of the sport (and not just saying that because I worked with the PGA of America the past four years). But sounds like you're a GA.

Does your paper have a budget for someone to spend this week at Augusta? The Open Championship? The U.S. Open, golf and/or tennis? Can you call Ponte Vedra and get the Tour to line you up with Dustin or Rickie or Jordan or Rory, or even the local pros on the Tour? That's what's missing when you don't have a dedicated staffer or columnist with long-time ties to the sport and a travel budget.

In the glory days, just about every paper worth its salt had an in-person prescence at the Indy 500, Daytona 500, Masters, World Series, Super Bowl, NCAA Championship, etc., because not only could they afford it, they felt it necessary to tell an unique story.

When I started covering NASCAR, every medium to large paper in North Carolina, plus Atlanta and Daytona had at least one full-time racing writer who traveled at least to all of the southeastern races.

From my 2010 Motorsports Resource Guide: Don Coble, Morris News Service; Reid Spencer, Sporting News; Nate Ryan, USA Today; Viv Bernstein, New York Times; Jim Peltz, L.A. Times (RIP Shav Glick); Liz Clarke, Washington Post; Mike Brudenell, Detroit Free Press; Mike Vega, Boston Globe; Rick Minter, Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Dave Kallman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Tania Ganguli, Orlando Sentinel; Jeff Wolf, Las Vegas Review-Journal; Angelique Chengelis, Detroit News; Jim Utter, Charlotte Observer (RIP David Poole); Dustin Long, Virginian Pilot; Tony Fabrizio, Tampa Tribune; Shawn Courchesne, Hartford Courant; Craig Wack, Memphis Commercial Appeal; Doug Demmons, Birmingham News; Matt Calkins, Riverside Press-Enterprise; Randy Covitz, Kansas City Star; Mark Armijo, Phoenix; Mark DeCotis, Florida Today; Monte Dutton, Gaston Gazette; Lewis Franck, Reuters; Godwin Kelly, Daytona Beach News-Journal; Thomas Pope, Fayetteville Observer; Kenny Bruce, NASCAR Illustrated; Tom Jensen, RACER; Bruce Martin, NSSN; Al Pearce, Autoweek; Lee Spencer, FOX; Pete Pistone, CBS; Jeff Hood, Racin Today; Bob Pockrass, Scene Daily; Ed Hinton, ESPN; Brent James, SI; Mike Mulhern, Winston-Salem.

That's just print/online, and not including all the AP folks. And ignoring us NASCAR.com wonks. Seven years ago.

Many of those names are retired. Others are someplace else. Not many are still on the beat. And things aren't going to go back to the way they used to be. I'll bet golf and tennis beat writers have a similar list of former colleagues.

 

[HanSenSE]

I keep looking through this forum at the number of layoff threads active on the first page, then see more tweets from APSE on layoffs elsewhere, and I say to myself, folks are worried about window-dressing events like the Masters and Daytona? As the focus becomes more localized and budgets get thinner, those trips are going to be few and far between. At the same time, AP has really stepped up its game in the last few years with Doug Ferguson and Jenna Fryer as national writers in their sports where none existed before.

 

[playthrough]

I keep looking through this forum at the number of layoff threads active on the first page, then see more tweets from APSE on layoffs elsewhere, and I say to myself, folks are worried about window-dressing events like the Masters and Daytona? As the focus becomes more localized and budgets get thinner, those trips are going to be few and far between. At the same time, AP has really stepped up its game in the last few years with Doug Ferguson and Jenna Fryer as national writers in their sports where none existed before.

If memory serves, Ron Sirak was the AP golf writer before Ferguson and covered the sport nationally.

Sure, there's no comparison between covering the Masters and keeping a job. But there's a greater point about what is lost when budgets are slashed to the point that big events can't get covered by big outlets. As the story said, the Dallas Morning News wasn't at Augusta with a staff writer when hometown kid Spieth won. That's incredibly sad for what was once arguably the best sports section in America, and I'm sure readers noticed. Part of being local is also covering your guy when he's winning on a national stage, if you ask me.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

When the paper doesn't cover major events, why buy it? What is it offering the golf/tennis/racing (both kinds) fan that they can't get from national outlets online? By far the biggest complaint I hear from citizens about their local papers/websites in my travels is "there's nothing in it anymore." That's not true, of course, but what they're really saying is "what interests me isn't in the paper anymore."

 

[Alma]

More local coverage, in and of itself, is a good thing. Really. It is OK to stay home from the expensive event.

I wish it didn't have to come at the expense of boutique reward events that journalists like to check off their bucket list, but I may not read a single piece on The Masters this week. I may read 4-6, but that's about it. I'll watch the tournament. I'll follow commentary on Twitter on Sunday, which is the new school part of me. The old school part of me - which is the part that didn't have "national Web sites" to read before 2000 or whatever, never read much about the Masters, aside from the occasional magazine article, anyway.

 

[HanSenSE]

If memory serves, Ron Sirak was the AP golf writer before Ferguson and covered the sport nationally.

Sure, there's no comparison between covering the Masters and keeping a job. But there's a greater point about what is lost when budgets are slashed to the point that big events can't get covered by big outlets. As the story said, the Dallas Morning News wasn't at Augusta with a staff writer when hometown kid Spieth won. That's incredibly sad for what was once arguably the best sports section in America, and I'm sure readers noticed. Part of being local is also covering your guy when he's winning on a national stage, if you ask me.

Yes, Sirak was first. And Ferguson got a rep early for being a Tiger fanboi, but then I'd read his stories on non-Tiger tourneys and was impressed.

As for the DMN, tough call. Obviously, no way of telling in advance if local boy will make good, and who know how Augusta would handle someone parachuting in for one day, but, good grief, do a phoner, find a stringer or something, if necessary. We're in this "whatever it takes" era, like it or not.

 

[maumann]

So Jenna Fryer and Doug Ferguson will handle the nuts and bolts? Fine. I can read them online in dozens of places. What a staff's writers and columnists do is add a unique local perspective and analysis that's different from the AP lede and the Tuesday "wrap-up opinion," which is almost always a rehash of post-gamer quotes.

I like vanilla ice cream, but I don't want to be told I can't order anything but vanilla ice cream. Baskin Robbins sells more than one flavor for a reason.

What makes me want to buy your paper, listen to your radio or TV station or go to your website to find out more? That's where management is failing not only the industry, but journalists AND the audience they profess to care deeply about (sarcasm intended). They are blind to the basic fact that if you continually fish in smaller and smaller ponds, you'll get smaller and smaller fish.

Hyperlocal is a myth. Pull out any newspaper from before 1980 and notice in addition to preps and colleges and local features, you still got the box scores, a column and a national/world overview.

This isn't about me, thankfully. I retired last summer, have a motorhome in the driveway and gas is cheap. I'm one of those lousy, rotten, stinking, egg-sucking baby boomers who found a way to make a career beginning with vinyl records and reel-to-reel tape decks to Instagram, TweetDeck and memes.

I worry about the talented, caring people in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s in mass communications who are being scammed by the phrase, "We can't afford to expend resources on things a wide audience might find interesting. Instead, work harder and cheaper on clicks and page views and listicles. Oh, and here's your two-week severance. We found an intern willing to do three jobs without pay."

 

[TexasVet]

Every big paper (and a lot of mid-sized papers) had a golf writer who would hit the big national events while also providing comprehensive coverage of the one or two weeks when the circus would come to their town. But when the budgets started going south, the first cuts weren't the baseball or football writers, it was the golf writer. ... .

Very well said. Same goes for those fantastic horse racing writers — many who were outstanding.

 

[Old Time Hockey]

When the paper doesn't cover major events, why buy it? What is it offering the golf/tennis/racing (both kinds) fan that they can't get from national outlets online? By far the biggest complaint I hear from citizens about their local papers/websites in my travels is "there's nothing in it anymore." That's not true, of course, but what they're really saying is "what interests me isn't in the paper anymore."

I don't know, Michael. Sometimes there really is nothing in the paper. The day the Chicago Tribune started asking $2.50 for a 24-page weekday paper (in outlying areas) was the day I stopped buying the Tribune even occasionally.

 

[dirtybird]

So Jenna Fryer and Doug Ferguson will handle the nuts and bolts? Fine. I can read them online in dozens of places. What a staff's writers and columnists do is add a unique local perspective and analysis that's different from the AP lede and the Tuesday "wrap-up opinion," which is almost always a rehash of post-gamer quotes.

I like vanilla ice cream, but I don't want to be told I can't order anything but vanilla ice cream. Baskin Robbins sells more than one flavor for a reason.

What makes me want to buy your paper, listen to your radio or TV station or go to your website to find out more? That's where management is failing not only the industry, but journalists AND the audience they profess to care deeply about (sarcasm intended). They are blind to the basic fact that if you continually fish in smaller and smaller ponds, you'll get smaller and smaller fish.

The issue of course here is that the local writer is different to the extent that people notice consistently and care about the difference in a big way. And for a newspaper, whose audience by nature spans the full gamut of interests, people who REALLY care about golf (the ones who consistently notice the gap between AP and a staffer) make up a pretty small proportion. Now assuming they don't turn to golf-centric publications already, you'd be throwing many thousands of dollars to keep them.

We'll end up going toward more specialist publications because that's how the information market works now. The vast majority of newspaper's specialty is their own area.