Imagine the surprise of Eugene-area residents if they were to open up their daily Register-Guard to read the results of, say, the previous night’s women’s soccer game, only to find the byline Oregon Daily Emerald beneath the writer’s name. Surely, the outsourcing of Oregon’s non-revenue sports coverage to the University’s student paper would raise a small outcry.
How, then, must Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, residents feel? On Jan. 12, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced an unprecedented blockbuster deal: The News would share coverage of the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars with the Star-Telegram, and the Star-Telegram would share coverage of the Texas Rangers with the News. Both papers will cover the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas high school sports scene – the two juiciest beats – as per usual. The reason being?
“This arrangement allows both papers to reduce expenses, eliminate duplicative stories and still maintain high quality exclusive coverage our readers have come to expect,” said Robert W. Mong Jr., editor of the News, in a published
staff memo.
The Star-Telegram and the News have already implemented similar measures, sharing entertainment stories and photographs, but this could be the most definitive example of the constricting budgets faced by the print industry. Layoffs seem to come and go, but the coverage doesn’t change. And when it hits the sports section – the incubator for maddening sports obsessions in many twenty-somethings – it hits much closer to home.
The cost-cutting trend of sharing coverage to save money may hit home even sooner. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, owned by publishing giant Hearst Corp., is currently looking for a new owner, and on Jan. 9 it announced the possible closure of the paper if it could not find a buyer within 60 days.
Nineteen days in, no luck yet. This would leave the Seattle Times (whose ownership already handles many of the Post-Intelligencer’s administrative functions) as the only big ticket in town. It’s not unrealistic to foresee a future where the competing newspaper is a myth. No more Sun-Times and Tribune for Chicago, no more Daily News or Times in Los Angeles. What are the odds that this spreads into local coverage?
My generation – and the Emerald’s primary reader base – absorbs most of its daily content from online sources, including sports. I consider myself highly anachronistic; I value my morning sports section above all and supplement my daily reading with the blogs and online news sources of my choice. But many newspapers have adjusted willingly to the demand for consistently updated online news. (The Emerald, for instance, maintains several reporter blogs, including the sports desk’s “Press Pass” blog. This is a shameless plug for some publicity, but a lot of unpaid effort is taken to constantly update it.)
From a professional perspective, this is yet another glaring sign that journalism jobs will be harder and harder to come by. I do not believe that the need for print journalism will ever fully cease on the national level, but specialization in the manner of the Dallas/Fort Worth papers is going to drive down some of the competition for readership and stories. Competition is important to anyone who reads the sports section; it’s part of what sports are all about and what make sports so enjoyable. To paraphrase the cliche, imagine where all that hate would go without the Cowboys or the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Lakers.
Another detraction from the increased competition could possibly be the content. Journalism jobs do not
always pay according to the effort put forth by the journalists. (For instance, we at the Emerald sports desk currently do not have a travel budget and must attend road contests on our own dimes.) All the effort spent toward a livable but decidedly modest salary, coupled with a lack of competition for stories, could lead to decreases in the content and its quality.
The worst-case scenario, in the eyes of the reporter, is that a worthy story goes untold. The discipline, skill and scale exhibited by your sports page’s features is not easy to master. Anyone who has ever been affected emotionally by a story understands this.
You, the reader, have spoken. You want coverage from all sides and instantaneous access, and you command a level of sophistication and knowledge in the stories you read. You may never or may have never developed a taste for print journalism. And print journalists are having to get more creative while cutting costs to meet your demands. Still, the fundamental principles of journalism and the sanctity of the institution still hold great value, and the writers who hold the torch wish to do none other than their best work.
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