HBO's "Real Sports" Examines State Of Newspaper Sports Coverage

Walsh Says ESPN's New Sites Trying To Complement Other Mediums In Local Markets

The exodus of sportswriters from newspapers and the decline of newspapers in general was examined by HBO's Frank Deford during last night's episode of "Real Sports." In the time it takes to "compose, print, transport and deliver papers to your door, an Internet site can update a story a dozen times, making the old-fashioned newspaper feel stale and irrelevant." FanHouse.com's Jay Mariotti, formerly a columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times, said sports are "made for the Internet." Mariotti: "It's made for the guy who wants to dissect that game he just watched. It's not made to wait 12, 13 hours. By then there's a new cycle of news." Deford noted the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased print operations this year, and "industry stalwarts" like the Boston Globe, S.F. Chronicle, and Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News "are in big trouble." Even with the "survivors, sports sections have been decimated by staff cutbacks, fewer pages and reduced coverage." However, the transition to more Internet-based content may not be easy, because as "sportswriting moves from print to online, the journalism industry is confronting a troubling irony: The only thing losing money faster than the print version of the newspaper is the online version. So far, consumers have simply been unwilling to pay for sportswriting online. So if newspapers do eventually die out, it may very well mean the end of sports coverage as we know it." Meanwhile, the proliferation of local online news sites, such as ESPN's ventures in Chicago and Boston, is growing. ESPN Senior VP & Exec Editor John Walsh: "We're trying to be a part of the coverage of the local markets that complements what other mediums are doing in that market." Deford told Walsh, "You know you scared the hell out of newspapers in those cities." Walsh: "I think that newspapers have been scared for about 15 years once the Internet came out, and it has nothing to do with ESPN." Following the report, HBO's Bryant Gumbel said it is getting to the point where people "don't differentiate between a blog or an investigative report." Deford said that is a "problem," because investigative reports involve "reporting, going out and discover(ing) things." Deford: "We all know that the bulk of that through the years has come from newspapers" ("Real Sports," HBO, 9/15).

THE INTERNET IS NOT ALL BAD: SPORTINGNEWS.com's Dan Levy writes the internet "has given many more people ... a voice in the world," but that is "not a bad thing, as Deford's report seemed to indicate." Deford has made a name for himself on "many platforms, including newspapers, but more famously books, magazines, radio and television." Levy: "And yes, the internet, as his columns are widely read on this here interweb, as well. He, like many other newspaper writers, left the black and white world of print journalism for more acclaim in other mediums. The death of the newspaper ... as told by yet another person who left it behind because it wasn't profitable" (SPORTINGNEWS.com, 9/16).

MORE DIVERSITY NEEDED IN NEWSROOMS: Sports journalists and researchers at a panel discussion hosted by Indiana Univ.'s National Sports Journalism Center Monday night claimed that a "lack of diversification among management in the sports departments of America's newsrooms is negatively affecting coverage and minority communities." UCF Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport Dir Richard Lapchick, one of the panelists at the forum, cited research from '06 which found 94% of AP sports editors "were men and 94[%] were white." Lapchick: "We just can't have an understanding of the complexity of sports about the controversies that arise about African American athletes -- or white athletes for that matter -- unless these numbers change." The panel, which also included N.Y. Times columnist William Rhoden and AP Sports Editors President Garry Howard, indicated that this "lack of diversity in the press box is leading to unbalanced coverage" (SPORTSJOURNALISM.org, 9/15).