Is It Really A Problem That 'Only' 31 Newspapers Sent Reporters To The World Series?

from the really? dept

Earlier this year, we had a discussion on the changing nature of sports beat reporting in the internet era, and one of the points we made is that there really is an awful lot of overlap and duplication in effort in some cases (such as the NY media). And yet, as pointed out by Jay Rosen old school baseball reporter Murray Chass is complaining that about half of the newspapers that have baseball beat writers did not sent a reporter to the World Series this year, calling it a "sign of a dying industry." Apparently there are 60 newspapers in America that have beat reporters who travel with the teams they cover, but only 31 of those papers sent reporters to the World Series.

I'm really searching to see how this is a problem. First of all, those 29 other papers are all papers whose local teams are not in the World Series, meaning less interest. Second, those beat reporters are equally capable of watching the games on TV from the comfort of their own home and getting their quotes from the televised press conferences afterwards. It's not as if a player on the Yankees is going to break an important story to the Braves beat reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. All they'd really be doing is adding to the media scrum around the players before and after each game, adding absolutely nothing of value. On top of that, the count of papers also leaves out the national media reporters -- such as those from ESPN and Sports Illustrated -- as well as the the reporters employed by MLB.com. I'd argue that the fact that about half of the papers decided not to send their own beat reporters is a sign of (finally) smarter newspaper management in not wasting money on a boondoggle for a baseball reporter.

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