12/18/24
December 31, 2009
Washington Times cuts staff, eliminates sports section: : "Somebody's gotta do it, deliver the eulogy for The Washington Times sports section, so it might as well be me. You see, I'm the department's Ranking Day Laborer, the first to set foot in the place in May of 1982 - almost half a life ago."
posted by lil_brown_bat to other at 10:46 PM - 13 comments
The least corrupt and pointless part of the newspapers... And it's the first to go...
posted by Drood at 12:41 AM on January 01, 2010
When I worked at newspapers I was under the impression that the sports page was one of the most profitable sections. I would never subscribe to a daily paper without sports. Moves like this will hasten the demise of dailies.
posted by rcade at 10:03 AM on January 01, 2010
Computers and blogging have made writers out of anyone and everyone. It's unavoidable, but sad. Newspapers are being kept alive by people who grew up with daily papers, while I doubt many young people ever consider picking one up. The sports section used to be the first thing I picked up when I bought the paper, but I can quickly get every story about any game on ESPN.com or wherever. I still enjoy reading opinion pieces and editorials, whether they be sports-related or not, but again, they're being pumped out by every person with a keyboard. A good friend of mine has been sports editor of our local paper for years, and was a journalism school graduate. He's so down on the entire newspaper business today that when the school I work for held career day last year, he didn't want to accept an invitation to speak (he sent someone else) because he didn't want his jaded, negative attitude he currently holds regarding the business to inevitably come out. Newspapers are eliciting their content from people from all walks of life, and not only are the newspapers themselves dying out, but schools of journalism are too.
posted by dyams at 10:48 AM on January 01, 2010
Beyond the internet, with it's up to the minute reporting and all the blogs, I also think our much more mobile society is contributing to this decision.
While I do scan the sports section, since I have no real interest in most of the local teams I don't read it to the level I used to back in my home town. The business sections, national news, comics, op-ed, etc. are pretty similar from one paper to the next, so it doesn't matter what paper I pick up. In a place like D.C. I could see this lack of interest in the sports being more prevelant than say a Dallas or Philly.
Each year I debate whether, or not, to renew my subscription to the local paper. Each year I get closer to dropping it. Most likely will wait another year until my son leaves for college...probably misguided in my thinking that I'm making any sort of impression on him about the need for staying on top of the news.
posted by dviking at 12:46 PM on January 01, 2010
Computers and blogging have made writers out of anyone and everyone.
Not quite. They've given everyone and anyone a forum, which is not the same as making writers out of them -- and that's exactly the problem. In the days before the internet, Hunter S. Thompson wrote about a large lighted sign that appeared over downtown Las Vegas. For $1.98 you could have your likeness appear on the sign, and for $1.98 more you could have your spoken message repeated over speakers attached to the sign. Thompson was horrified that any crazy with $3.96 could spew out their message over downtown Las Vegas; what must he have thought of the internet, where the reality is so much worse?
posted by lil_brown_bat at 12:52 PM on January 01, 2010
I'm amazed that some people here think it's a bad thing that the Internet gives everyone a forum. I used to work at a newspaper when we were practically the only game in town when it came to local information. We grew lazy and entitled and contemptuous of complaints. Things are so much better now there's no comparison. There's 20 times as much high-quality written sports coverage today as there was 15 years ago when the web was beginning to take off.
posted by rcade at 01:14 PM on January 01, 2010
I'm amazed that some people here think it's a bad thing that the Internet gives everyone a forum.
I'm amazed that some people here think that having a forum makes one a writer.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 05:52 PM on January 01, 2010
Maybe having a forum doesn't make you a writer, but being paid to write for a paper certainly doesn't make your writing any better. There are far more like dan shaughnessy than Hunter Thompson.
Anyway:
Fired Washington Times Sports Staffers Tweet Revenge
posted by justgary at 02:01 AM on January 02, 2010
I don't care where information comes from anymore -- pro media, blogs, tweets or message boards. I just care whether the source is credible and worthy of my time. The issue of whether that source qualifies as a "writer" or not seems like needless pedantry.
posted by rcade at 10:01 AM on January 02, 2010
The issue of whether that source qualifies as a "writer" or not seems like needless pedantry.
If you don't consider any label or any distinction meaningful, then I suppose just about everything would seem like "needless pedantry" to you. Chacun a son gout.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 07:24 PM on January 02, 2010
Waitaminnit, the Moonie News isn't really a newspaper of record anyway. So they weren't really writers to begin with.
posted by Hugh Janus at 07:38 PM on January 02, 2010
If you don't consider any label or any distinction meaningful, then I suppose just about everything would seem like "needless pedantry" to you.
There are plenty of labels I consider meaningful, like cardiologist, attorney and prostitute. But if I told you somebody was a writer, it could mean 100 different things. When did Hunter S. Thompson become a writer? Was it when he became a member of his high school literary club; when he became sports editor of an Air Force base newspaper; when he wrote for the Fort Walton, Fla., Jersey Shore, Pa., and Middletown, N.Y. newspapers; when he took short-story classes at Columbia; when he worked as a Time magazine copy boy; when he wrote two unpublished novels; or when he sold the Hells Angels article in 1965 that first got him attention?
posted by rcade at 08:18 PM on January 02, 2010
I was reading about this in the Biz of Baseball. They also had a good link to former Washington Post Sports Business writer Tim Lemke's new blog where he gave a good run down of the event and should be read by anyone else sad about the impending death of sports sections in papers.