“The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory... that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.”
— Joseph Schumpeter
The front page of the February 27 edition, the final edition, of the Rocky Mountain News has a simple two word headline below its masthead: “Goodbye, Colorado.” The paper that had reported the news to Colorado readers for almost 150 years, and had the 35th largest circulation in the nation, decided to say its farewell in a fitting manner. Instead of reporting the news, the Mountain News, much like the newspaper industry, had become the news.
Caught in the perfect storm of a depressed economy and industry instability, over the last year the plight of the newspaper has itself become a leading story. This is ironic, for a business that prides itself on staying out of the limelight.
But what is there to make about the decline of the newspaper and how serious is it? And most importantly for sports fans, how will it affect the sports section?
The answer to those questions is complex.
Over the last year the newspaper industry has stamped itself as an endangered species. Along with the Mountain News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has also closed down. The Newark Star-Ledger and San Francisco Chronicle, both among the top 16 in circulation nationwide, came close. In order to stay financially solvent, 151 people in The Star-Ledger newsroom took buyouts. Earlier this month, The Boston Globe was threatened to be shut down by The New York Times, its parent company.
What can explain this sudden downfall? First, it is important to understand that the situation newspapers are now was, in fact, not dropped on them suddenly. Instead it has been a fluid decline, exacerbated in the last 12 months by a receding economy.
There are many reasons why newspapers have been thrust into their current predicament, but the most distinct ones are the rising popularity of the Internet and the loss in advertisements.
The biggest problem for newspaper has been its inability to deal with the immediacy of the Internet.
“We’re going through a volcanic period now,” said Tony Kornheiser, a 36-year newspaper veteran and, most recently, Washington Post sports columnist. “The volcano has exploded and all the lava comes out and takes ink and paper. Ink and paper is gone. Because people can’t wait. They’re not going to wait 12 hours to get something they can read if they can see it on TV or get it on their computers. So newspapers understand this and are trying to move towards a 24 hour day newspaper on the web.”
Because scores and game stories are available so quickly on the Internet, it has left newspapers lagging.
“Newspaper can no longer provide the news as quick as they used to be able to provide it,” said Matt Romanoski, a former deputy sports editor for The Star Ledger. “That’s because of the Internet. If something happens, if the Yankees make a trade, it’s on the Internet, it’s on [radio station] WFAN, it’s on television. The last place you’re going to look is the newspaper.”
Because of the loss of readership away from newspapers to the Internet, the biggest source of income for the industry has also fallen — advertisements. No longer are advertisers spending their marketing dollars on a lowered amount of consumers, that buck is now going elsewhere.
“I think the combination of advertising market drying up, quite honestly there is a zillion factors, union contracts, advertising drying up, classified ads on Craiglist for free and the fact that not that many 20-year-old college students pick up a newspaper every day and read it,” Romanoski said. “Advertisers are saying, ‘Wait a minute, what am I advertising in there for?’”
The loss of readership and in turn revenue from advertising has had a highly adverse effect on the newspaper industry. This, of course, has affected the sports section tremendously. With lowered revenue and decreasing amounts of revenue streams, newspapers have had to cut back on the size of their papers and on the amount of content. Tom Jolly, sports editor for The New York Times, says that in the last few years the Times has reduced the size of their paper by 10 percent and equally cut the amount of pages.
To counteract that, the traditional sports section is no longer so traditional. To keep up with the times, the sports section has at times had to make a few small revisions and at other times, wholesale changes.
The smaller changes have occurred in the sports pages that go to print. Because of the reduced space, there are now smaller, more concise sports sections. Gone are the game stories, wrap-ups and box scores that readers used to be so dependent on newspapers for.
“One response to that has been to write tighter and more efficient stories,” Jolly said. “Any time we’re confronted with reductions, we take stock of what we do that’s most distinctive. What is it about the Times sports section that is of most interest to readers? In general, it’s our reporting and writing and so we’ve worked hard to preserve what’s distinctive and reduce what’s not, like statistical information and routine game reports, both of which are readily available on our Web site and others, 24/7.”
Other papers have also abandoned former staples of the sports section, to become more feature-story oriented.
As the sports section of the past is becoming antiquated, a whole new medium is emerging. The wholesale changes come on the level sports will be covered and of what geographic areas. The Times has created an online global edition, dedicated to coverage of sports worldwide. This also creates a new revenue stream for the paper in terms of advertising.
As the Times is expanding their reach, the future of the sports section, and increasingly its present, is in localized coverage.
“I expect most news organizations to focus much more on their local markets rather than trying to be all things to all readers,” Jolly said. “Organizations in areas rich in high school sports will focus on that instead of trying to cover the college and pro teams 50 miles away, and they’ll drop the expense of a wire service because readers will be able to get that information a click away at another Web site.”
Romanoski agrees. He believes a trap that some newspapers have fallen into is to go beyond their range and cover what is not necessary.
“I think where many of the mid-major newspapers like the Courier News, The Home News kind of lose their way is they try to be something that they’re not,” Romanoski said. “Instead of concentrating on local [coverage].”
Romanoski speaks from experience and not just as an outside observer. He has been in the industry for more than 20 years, with the New York Post and The Star-Ledger, before taking a buyout this past year. Now he has embarked on a project that is representative of where the future of sports journalism may lie.
He is one of the co-founders of newjerseynewsroom.com, a Web site started and run by victims of a dying art, 40 former Star-Ledger employees who took buyouts when the paper was on the verge of bankruptcy. They have devoted their Web site to coverage of primarily statewide news and news of interest to New Jersey residents.
“Myself and four to five others, instead of sitting there and bitching, we figured we’d give it a shot and try something different. If newspapers are dying then it doesn’t mean the whole medium is dying,” Romanoski said. “There’s some people on our staff who have been covering their beats for 20 years. They love what they do and they weren’t ready to give it up just because there was no longer a newspaper, doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who aren’t looking for the news.”
Recently their sports section had stories on a Piscataway High School product that was drafted in the NFL and a local bowler’s success in the lanes. It also includes familiar names in former Star-Ledger writers Dan Graziano and David Waldstein.
Newjerseynewsroom.com is not alone in what they are trying to do. After the Rocky Mountain News shut down, former employees of the paper tried to start a similar Web site but have to this point been unsuccessful because of funding.
Nonetheless, the message is clear. The future of sports coverage lies in communal websites dedicated to coverage of specific areas and local stories.
Michael Wilbon, a Washington Post sports columnist, believes that is how it will play out.
“Yeah, that’s the smart move,” Wilbon said. “If you want to put something together, that would seem to be the way to go now, not ‘Well, let’s try to hold off time.’ It’s not going to happen.”
With the Internet growing and the newspaper industry going there, a large question left unanswered is: What will become of print newspapers? The outlook is definitely not promising.
Wilbon and Kornheiser see the elimination of print newspapers not too far off in the future, save a certain few.
“Economically its not viable anymore,” Kornheiser said. “The horse industry was important in America in the 1700s and the 1800s and nobody ever felt it would be replaced. And so people made buggy whips and people made leather saddles. Then cars came along. OK, we move to the next thing. The Internet exists now and we’re going to have to move to the next thing. People want more instantaneous gratification in terms of news.”
Jolly and Romanoski are not as pessimistic. Romanoski still sees a place for local and college papers and the nationally prominent papers. Jolly does see writing on the wall though.
“My guess is that print still has quite a bit of life left in it, but that it will exist in a much more limited form than we’ve come to know,” Jolly said. “So, yes, I’d say that, in general, the future of sports is online.”
Whatever becomes of the newspaper and the sports section, there is confidence that there will always be coverage and storytelling.
“We’re just simply talking ultimately, when the dust settles, about delivery. It’s just delivery,” Kornheiser said. “How are you going to get the news? The news is still the news. The reporting eventually will still be the reporting. The fringe people, the blogging people, will exist still in the fringes. What will happen is it will be more interactive obviously, but the news will still be reported and the value will still be there.”
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