Evolution of sports journalism
// December 15th, 2009 // Journalism, Social Media, Sports
As newspapers continue to downsize and die a slow death, all those reporters are finding themselves out of work on life rafts as their former bosses steer the Titanic. For news reporters, it’s arguably a little easier to find work on the Web, especially if they’re tech savvy. Sports reporters… the waters are a little more murky.
Newspapers used to be great PR advertising machines for sports teams. It wasn’t unusual for a big city paper to have a sports reporter per team, whose sole job was to find and write stories about that team. Think of all the free publicity that creates. But now newspapers are cutting costs, laying off staff and sharing stories across newspapers. The Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer used to write up separate stories about games — now they share stories based on geography.
Sports teams, sports leagues, and Web sites that recognized this shift early are capitalizing on it, and it’s paying dividends. I just want to take a minute to look at a few of those early adopters who have helped turn sports journalism on its head and are leading the evolution of sports journalism as we enter a new decade:
Adam Lucas, right, interviewing UNC baseball coach Mike Fox
Adam Lucas joined TarHeelBlue.com in March of 2001 as an embedded reporter. It was the first hire of its kind at a university, and eight years later most of us in the Tar Heel fan base are still thankful for UNC’s foresight. Now more schools are following UNC’s lead, offering more than just game recaps by SIDs. It’s both a positive trend and a potentially alarming one. Adam’s articles are must-reads for me following a game. They are a great change of pace from news-ed pieces, written for Tar Heel fans by an objective Tar Heel grad who has the ear of a fan base.
This is the future of sports journalism for many teams. For example, every single MLB team has a beat writer for that team’s web site and other sports leagues are following suit. As long as there are still independent journalists writing about teams to offer an unfiltered opinion, I’m all for embedded reporters. Adam has proven over these past eight years that he has access to insider stories newspaper and TV reporters aren’t privy to.
Shaquille O’Neal and Chad Ochocinco have embraced Twitter in a way that enables them to reach out to fans directly. For athletes, their names are their brand. What do you think of first when I say, “Tiger Woods?” How has that answer changed over the past month? Tiger hurt his own image, which essentially is his brand name and that’s cost him advertising revenue. Shaq and Chad Johnson realize Twitter offers them the ability to shape their own image without having to rely on sports reporters or the World Wide Leader.
Jason Peck wrote last December that Shaq had 21,000 followers at the time. In one year, that number doubled… and doubled again… and doubled again. Shaq now has more than 2.6 million followers, 12 times what he had last December. Chad Johnson has more than 500,000 followers and launched his own iPhone app that at one point was one of the top two highest selling sports apps on the iPhone. He even broke the news when the Bengals’ first-round draft pick signed with the team. Sports journalism is evolving on the social media front because athletes realize they don’t need journalists. They are often eliminating the middle man and reaching out directly to fans. This will only continue to grow in the next decade.
ESPN is hoping to change local sports reporting in much the same way that it changed national sports reporting. The WWL has started to roll out localized versions of ESPN.com in Chicago, Boston, Dallas and other cities. In many cases, ESPN is hiring the same sports reporters in those areas who used to cover teams for the local newspapers. It’s a big venture, one they are pushing hard on network programming like SportsCenter and live games. The smart thing ESPN is doing, is they are going after both national and local advertisers. On ESPNChicago.com you might see an ad for StubHub right next to an ad for a local jewelry store. ESPN can also reuse stories and video already being published on ESPN.com in a way that newspapers can’t. It’s Chicago site, which launched in the spring, has already surpassed the Tribune and Sun-Times in terms of traffic. Expect similar results in the other cities over time.
MLB has pioneered the Internet and social media in ways other leagues still haven’t. NFL dominated TV. The NBA has dominated worldwide expansion and player marketability. MLB is dominating the newest frontier. The NFL is still king of the sports world, but their efforts pale in comparison to what MLB is doing on the Web. MLB has beat reporters for each team, localized all of its content onto one site, created MLBlogs.com so fans can add free content of their own, and was the first to make games available online. It even launched the best sports iPhone app I’ve ever seen, which lets you watch live games on your phone — from pretty much anywhere. There’s so much MLB is doing right on the Web, you almost wish the guys making those decisions were running other areas of the league
Are there sports journalism pioneers you think deserve to be mentioned? Tell me who belongs on this list and what they’re doing in the evolution of sports journalism.
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