What it means to cover baseball in 2010
ByMy dad, a lifelong reader of The New York Times, emailed me a few weeks ago as the Yanks were amidst Spring Training. Did I, he asked, notice a decrease in the number of articles about March baseball in The Times Sports Section this year? Granted, The Times has never covered New York sports with the same vigor and thoroughness as the Daily News or The Post, but even by Times’ standards, coverage of baseball this spring seemed light.
At the time, I thought little of it. It was just another discussion point in the ongoing debate my family has over the future of print journalism vs. content and news delivered in real time on the Internet. If The Times didn’t see fit to saturate its Sports pages with Spring Training stories, so be it. Anyone interested in tales from the Grapefruit League could find plenty to read on numerous websites.
Apparently, though, my dad wasn’t alone in noted the decreased content out of Florida and Arizona. Over at Fangraphs yesterday, Marc Hulet surveyed the newspaper industry’s baseball coverage and found that coverage in his area was on the wane as well. Those who added their comments to the piece presented a mixed bag of viewpoints. Some felt that their local papers had ramped up coverage; others felt that print articles remained as they always did.
Upon closer inspection, though, nearly everyone agreed that the Internet is where the news now is. By and large, newspapers have expanded or maintained their sports coverage, but as newspapers decrease in size, that coverage remains online in the form of web-only features, blog posts or various other Internet-based analysis. Some larger sports outlets – ESPN, Fox Sports, Yahoo – are poaching local talent and providing them with a more maleable platform and a larger potential audience. Others – local newspapers – are pushing their writers to rely upon and use the Internet.
In New York, we’ve seen this paradigm shift unfold. Led by Peter Abraham in 2006, the New York papers ramped up their online presence. Today, Marc Carig, Mark Feinsand and the team at LoHud, among others, bring non-stop online coverage of Yankee news and analysis to the Internet long before their game-recap and news-capsule pieces appear in the next day’s print edition – that is, if the game ends early enough. If I happen upon a Daily News in the subway in the morning after a Yankee game, nothing in the sports section is news to me.
For us, the Internet has always been our primary medium, and although we complement beat writer coverage, we are, in a way, competing for the same eyeballs. We know that ESPN New York, for instance, is making a push to capture Internet-savvy sports fans. We know that New York’s cut-throat tabloids are putting more and more content up on their websites, and so we respond in turn.
This year, as our readers have noticed by now, we’ve changed the format of our game recaps. For decades, baseball game stories have followed a fairly static approach: Run through the chronology of the game, highlight the big plays, get a few rote quotes from the players, file story. Ours are trying to lend something more to the game and our understanding of it. We still highlight the big plays, but we are trying to do so with the assumption that anyone reading knows what happened.
With MLB.com’s replay offerings and numerous enhanced box scores and play-by-play applications prevalent online, fans know the minutiae of the game as it unfolds or soon after they arrive back at their computers. What we want to do is highlight aspects of the game that don’t always pop. A dramatic home run late in the game may appear to be the biggest play, but what of that key out earlier on? What of the two runs scored in the 1st? What of the run prevention in the sixth?
Beyond the results, we can look closely at the process as well. If a pitcher doesn’t have it, can we pinpoint what he was doing wrong? Was it pitch selection, poor scouting or a flat pitch? Player quotes add minimal amounts of context, and what we see at home with advanced pitch charting helps us bring you our reader a more nuanced and complete understanding of the game in context.
Baseball and the Internet have come together nicely over the last decade, and as I wrap up this meta blog post, I am optimistic that the next ten years will be just as productive. It’s an old sport long covered by traditional media adapting to a new and faster way to deliver information. That can only lead to positive developments for everyone involved.
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When I was growing up in Iowa I had no idea what went on with the Yankees. All I had was the box scores and no way to know what went on. I had to make it up in my mind how the game played out. Now I can get what happened by watching the Yankees on MLB extra innings. College I could watch gamecast and see what was happening by checking out sites. It sure has changed in the last 15 years.
We know that ESPN New York, for instance, is making a push to capture Internet-savvy sports fans.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
Zing!
(Agreed… I checked it out of curiosity and quickly realized I’d barely ever see that site again.)
Really? I actually found it to be a pretty decent site. Not that it could ever overtake RAB for baseball coverage, but as a one stop NY sports site, I think it does a pretty good job. If you want more specific information on each team, obviously it would make sense to go to a more specific blog. But, if you’re looking for a quick snapshot of the top 1 or 2 stories for each team in NY, i think it’s a great spot.
I just can’t support a site that puts out the dreck that they put out when there are other places where I can find my quick snapshots without feeling dirty for going there.
Oh yea, I forgot to mention I have to shower both before and after visiting.
But yea, I’m definitely not going there for their cutting edge analysis, more just for the grouping of headlines so I can keep up on the Jets, Knicks, Rangers, and other teams I don’t follow as closely as the Yankees and Giants.
Where do you go for your NY quick fix? I’m certainly not opposed to upgrade.
Eh, I guess I really don’t have a single spot for that. I get why the localized ESPN sites are well-liked for that purpose, they’re just not for me. I’ve been using twitter as kind of an internet dashboard recently, and sometimes I’ll do a very quick scan of one of the bigger media sites in the morning just to see if there’s a big story I’ve missed. But really, I check in on the few sites I follow that analyze the teams I follow closely, and that’s about it.
Yea I see. I haven’t gotten into Twitter yet, but I feel that may be the next addition to my internet browsing. I definitely spend the majority of my time on RAB, Fangraphs and other more specific sites of that nature, but I like having ESPNNY in my back pocket to check once a day just to see what else is going on with the local teams. I definitely don’t do much reading there, but it serves its purpose pretty nicely for my daily sports news needs.
Love the new game recaps.
I’ve been meaning to mention the new game re-caps, but I like them a lot. Very interesting and informative way of presenting the information. Good work!
I’m sure the experiences of your regular readers won’t be representative of the experiences of the larger general public, since we’re obviously a pretty self-selected sample, but I get less and less of my baseball information from traditional media sources – and by that I don’t just mean print media (which I basically never use anymore) but even larger media players on the internet. There are so many outlets on the internet today providing what I consider to be better and more in-depth coverage that I don’t even really need the traditional outlets much anymore. I’ll go to an ESPN or another bigger media presence on the internet if I want to look at the standings, or get a box score for a game the night before, or to read one of the very few writers at those sites that I still follow, but as someone who follows the game I don’t find that those sites offer me much anymore. Between sites like this, twitter, beat writer blogs, and sites like fangraphs and baseball-reference, I just don’t have the need for the larger outlets much anymore. I think that type of coverage has become obsolete for many of the fans who follow the game more closely.
I’ll go to an ESPN or another bigger media presence on the internet if I want to look at the standings, or get a box score for a game the night before, or to read one of the very few writers at those sites that I still follow, but as someone who follows the game I don’t find that those sites offer me much anymore. Between sites like this, twitter, beat writer blogs, and sites like fangraphs and baseball-reference, I just don’t have the need for the larger outlets much anymore. I think that type of coverage has become obsolete for many of the fans who follow the game more closely.
These are my feelings exactly.
I’ll add that TYU falls into the “sites like this” category mentioned above. (Plug alert.)
Aw, you’re making me blush!
(seriously, though, thanks for reading)
Agreed. I used to follow Heyman and Rosenthal daily, and have not read any of their drivel in about 3 or 4 months, and have no intentions on reading it again. As we’ve seen with ESPN-NY, there are big market writers that are writing complete and utter nonsense to get attention, which is mind bottling (h/t TSJC). Shouldn’t the “little guys” be the ones who are writing something way off base to try and get attention? I have cut back on a ton of sites I visit daily, but seem to get better information by following fewer sites.
So do you think there will eventually be a drastic change in things? They’re basically paying writers millions of dollars to write a broad and/or oversimplification of certain things that less and less people are reading. Would you think that sooner or later there’s a drastic change where new innovative bloggers with far more rational information begin to take their place at some point?
Obviously, the difference is that a lot of bloggers are partial to one team and have been specifying on that one team for a long period of time…but one would think that if anybody were offered an opportunity of this caliber – most might be able to implement the same style to all the other teams on certain occasions. I may be wrong though.
Actually, after reading what I had written –
Would you think that sooner or later there’s a drastic change where new innovative bloggers with far more rational information begin to take their place at some point?
Probably not. Majority of the people out there enjoy reading “tabloid” style articles that stretch reality.
My bad.
Well I think the shift you mention is certainly already happening, but I’d caution against thinking the shift will continue advancing until it completely usurps the MSM and even the larger online media outlets like ESPN. As I said above, we’re a self-selected group here and we’re not representative of the larger general public, and we have to keep that in mind. There is a HUGE audience for people like Heyman and Rosenthal (just to pick the first two names that popped into my head), and that audience will not disappear. For evidence of what I’m talking about, look at television coverage of baseball on ESPN, for example. Are we seeing some more intelligent people (Law for one example) pop up and provide more well-reasoned and modern analysis once in a while? Sure, of course. But at the same time they’re playing to the larger general public and, thus, the lowest common denominator, by throwing people like John Kruk at us 24/7.
Point being… Yeah, there’s definitely a shift occurring… But I don’t think we’re going to see some massive media revolution occur at the higher levels. There will always be a huge segment of the sports fan population that is less intelligent and less informed and wants coverage like that the MSM traditionally has provided, they’re not going to disappear.
A couple of things… Clearly I was writing my response when you posted your response, so I hadn’t seen it yet… So yeah, I think your second comment is probably more accurate than your first. And just to clarify… I’m not really disagreeing with you, I DO think there’s a pretty significant movement going on in sports media and I think it’s awesome. I just don’t think it’s reasonable to think there’s going to be such a massive paradigm shift that all of sports media is going to become the kind of sports media that fans like the fans who might frequent a site like RAB will want to consume regularly.
Yeah, I agree with you. I was just thinking that if a major network like YES can “sponsor” a blog like RAB (I do not know the details behind the curtain, I’m just going by what has previously been said on here by the guys)…it just seems like if a major network like YES can “sponsor” a blog for literally pennies compared to paying a bunch of individual writers millions to do so…as well as “the economy being bad” – one would think that YES’s approach might not be all that far-fetched. Certain networks may opt for their sponsored material over paying an individual a boatload of money to say (at best) the same exact thing.
But that’s thinking way out of the box and assuming a bunch of things. Without understanding the procedures of anything entirely and using only what I see and what I’ve heard. But, you never know.
What we want to do is highlight aspects of the game that don’t always pop. A dramatic home run late in the game may appear to be the biggest play, but what of that key out earlier on? What of the two runs scored in the 1st? What of the run prevention in the sixth?
This is exactly what I like about this site. You can get the wrap up and box score at literally any site. You can see the highlights on numerous sports channels and even your local news network until you’re blue in the face.
You guys have expanded upon this and made the review much more interesting.
I’m kind of taking a class on this as we speak for my MBA program, actually. “Developing New Products and Services II” (took the first one a few semesters ago). Basically talks about companies constantly trying to innovate new ideas and services to separate themselves from their competition. This may be a direct example in perhaps a different setting.
This is a trend that’s been going on for a while. I’ve been a reader of the Hartford Courant for the past 30 years. And for about 25 of those years the sports page was a reliable place to get coverage of most pro sports in Boston and New York. With I might add a pronounced Boston flavor. In fact one of the best Baseball writers in my opinion, Jack Oconnell was the primary Yankee scribe. for the past several years however we’ve been sold a bill of goods. Boston teams still get primary coverage, New York articles have a byline from Newark and the staff has been shrunk to the point that I no longer get the paper.
Say what you will about newspapers dying, in my opinion; the quality is poor whether the internet is competition or not. and that’s why nobody reads the newspaper anymore.
the quality is poor…and that’s why nobody reads the newspaper anymore.
That, too. The quality of print journalism is just…awful. Most writers are reactionary, too quick to judge, and not entirely informed on the latest ideas (i.e. advanced metrics, both offensive and defensive, though this is starting to change). As you said, regardless of the Internet’s role, the quality of both the writers’ ideas and writing needs to change.
“The quality of print journalism is just…awful. Most writers are reactionary, too quick to judge, and not entirely informed on the latest ideas (i.e. advanced metrics, both offensive and defensive, though this is starting to change).”
Until recently the MSM was a self-selected group of people who became “experts” because they chose to pursue careers in journalism and had press passes and had the means to distribute their work to large audiences. They weren’t experts because they necessarily presented better analysis and/or arguments than anyone else, they were experts just because they, like, chose to be. I’ve always felt that this is one of the best results of the shift we’ve seen in the past 10-15 years or so – when more people are admitted into the arena, the people who succeed will succeed because of the quality of their work, not because they happen to be part of a very small class of people who have the opportunity to ply their wares. Too many members of the MSM still cling to this notion that they’re somehow more important, and better qualified, to opine on matters simply by their inclusion in the class of people who comprise the MSM (cough Ken Rosenthal, I’m looking at you, fucknuts cough). It was always a mistaken notion, and now it’s clearly an outdated notion as well.
There is a negative side to this, though.
At least for a while, the majority of newspapers had editorial staffs which were informed, reasonably fair and impartial, and possessing good journalistic instinct and integrity. The bottom line was that you could trust what you read. People were checking facts.
On the web, there isn’t much policing, other than what you get from the free market, free speech debate. But it’s far easier, in the information age, for people to spread lies and misinformation.
But I agree….as we have ended the monopoly that TV and newspapers had on information, we have available to us much more information, much more indepth, more detailed, about everything. Sometimes we have to sift through crap to get it, but the level and quality of info so much better than the newspaper era it isn’t even funny.
“On the web, there isn’t much policing, other than what you get from the free market, free speech debate. But it’s far easier, in the information age, for people to spread lies and misinformation.”
Totally agree. But, as you acknowledge, the market tends to sort those things out to a certain extent. There’s a reason why blogs like RAB and sites/blogs like fangraphs gain exposure while the more gossip-oriented and less reliable outlets fall by the wayside.
And in a day and age when MSM journalists are frequently printing quotes from anonymous sources/scouts/front office types/agents/anyone they choose and are generally spreading rumor and gossip and innuendo, it’s tough to kill online sources too much.
Also, just to clarify… What I was addressing above was really the opinion-side of things, not the reporting of fact. I think there’s a role for, and I hope to see the continued existence and success of, the fact-based reporting side of the MSM. What I was addressing was instead the opinion-based side of the business… I meant that I don’t think the MSM journalists’ opinions/analysis (as stated above) is necessarily any more intelligent, well-informed or well-researched than the opinion/analysis of non MSM journalists, and I don’t think the people who offer those opinions are necessarily any more qualified to do so just because they chose to be journalists.
The issue is that most of these people are experts in journalism, or that is where their formal training is, and not in whatever field they actually cover (obviously there are exceptions). Therefore you get people that fundamentally may not understand what they’re covering, but are good at writing. This could be less of an issue in baseball, then something like finance, but an issue none the less.
Agreed, and this goes hand-in-hand with what I just wrote in response to Tank Foster, above. Training to be a journalist (and to be accurate not all journalists have formal training, but for the sake of this discussion let’s assume they’re all formally trained) does not make one more wise or better informed and, thus, somehow more qualified to offer their opinion. It makes them more qualified (one would hope, at least) to work as reporters, not leaders of public opinion.
It’s an old sport long covered by traditional media adapting to a new and faster way to deliver information. That can only lead to positive developments for everyone involved.
Except Murray Chass.
I have three close college friends who all worked in print media. Only one remains, and he’s with a magazine, and magazines have done better than newspapers in keeping their circulation up. Although ad revenues are plummeting still.
A related thing–Did anyone check out the coverage of the Masters golf tournament on masters.com? That event is light years ahead of almost any other internet/web based sports coverage I’ve seen. You could go to a leaderboard, pull up a player’s scorecard, and click on his score on any hole, and you would be directed to video footage of highlights of him playing that particular hole.
The live feeds worked very well. The recorded highlights were excellent. There were plenty of interviews, pictoral analyses, stats, human interest stories, etc., to satisfy everyone.
I think that’s the model of what we’re going to see going forward.
You’re going to be able to pull up a gamecast-type account of any baseball game and instantly see footage of any part of that game you wish.
I know they do it on a limited basis now, but what the Masters had was much better.
You can get a gamecast type account of any game right now, you just have to pay.
While I love the almost instant baseball info available on the internet I do miss dearly all the defunct baseball publications that I purchased religiously every season starting with the Sporting News Publications (Baseball Guide, Baseball Register and Baseball Record Book) and the Baseball Encyclopedia (and variants of same). I know you can simply go to Baseball Reference and get info but there is something comforting about simply being able to go out and purchase these books and have all the info at your finger tips by flipping pages. Surely there still should be a market for these kinds of publications. Baseball America still has some good publications but they don’t measure up to the old Sporting News ones.
but there is something comforting about simply being able
to go out and purchase these bookssit in my mother’s basement and have all the info at your finger tips byflipping pagesclicking the mouseOn that note, I do understand the sentiment. But in reality, the nostalgia for the old days can not keep up with the new pace of information gathering.
With apologies to the Overshare, if you need to grab something to read in the bathroom that has most of the history of baseball covered the Baseball Encyclopedia beats trying to drag the laptop or desktop in there or waiting for pages to print!
Very true, very true. Also, reading on the train, planes, etc, it’s often much easier to have a book or magazine. Print still does have it’s market and I think with proper adaptations to their business plans, they can stick around and continue to provide for that market.
The Post and Daily News make me want to throw up. I used to enjoy Tyler Kepner but seems he’s now the national baseball reporter for the NY Times which means nothing as far as I can tell.
I read RAB, Keith Law chats, and that’s it. I enjoy watching the games (but sadly it has to be on mute).
Related to journalism can anyone discuss how AWFUL Sterling and Waldman are?
I wonder how many people do this? I havent listened to the announcers (of any sport) for years. I generally throw on Sirius and listen to some music while I watch the game. If something crazy happens, like a big hit or an injury, I’ll flip back to the game audio to hear the crowd cheer or to hear an injury report, but that’s about it.
Geez, I don’t think the announcing is quite THAT bad…but to each their own haha
Who wants to work in newspapers? This girl!
shooting myself in the foot ftw.
I have no idea what bird owners will use to line their bird cages in a few years.
I bought a copy of the Daily News the morning after the Yankees won the World Series. That was November 5th. I wanted it as a keepsake. I still have copies of The Daily News the day after the Yankees won it all in ’96, ’98-2000. The last instance before that where I bought a newspaper because I wanted to was probably in high school — 7 years ago.
I also have a bunch of sports articles that I think are quality reads, well-written, and otherwise interesting to me. All of them are bookmarked in Firefox. There are about 30 of them. Only about 5 of those 30 have ever actually been printed in a publication.
The Internet has changed the landscape in two main ways. One, If I want to read a really interesting, well-written piece, I have no need to buy the print version when I could just get it online for free. Secondly, and more importantly, good sportswriting is not that easy to find in print anymore.
Last great piece I read that appeared in the Daily News is a profile of Mariano Rivera written by Christian Red: (http://www.nydailynews.com/spo.....vera.html/)
Another one of my favorites is a profile of Manny Ramirez done by Ben McGrath of The New Yorker: (http://www.newyorker.com/repor.....ct_mcgrath)
Another great piece is the Rivera profile done by Tom Verducci last October before the playoffs started: (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.c...../index.htm)
All of these articles are quality, quality stuff in my eyes. Problem is, I’m not going to find that in actual publications too often these days. Good-great writers still produce excellent stuff, but it’s all migrated online. And for some (see: Reilly, Rick) their great stuff only shows up once in a while now. (e.g. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn.....id=4817330)
Web sites like RAB have completely opened my eyes to the reality of what sports media is today. I finally came to realize that the vast majority of what people are exposed to is largely inaccurate, hearsay, narrative-/agenda-driven pontificating. It is rarely progressive in its commentary or analysis. It’s more often than not archaic and a ton of sound and fury signifying nothing.
I used to shoot to be a sportswriter like Mike Lupica. With some more exposure and a little education on the subject, I really should have been shooting for someone like Joe Posnanski the whole time. Problem was, I had never heard of him, much less read his stuff.
As I said when ESPN New York launched: we don’t need writers with a ton of bluster and big, flowery opinons that is buttressed by not a whole lot of new ways of thinking and analyzing sports. We have that already. Bad writing in a new, more immediate medium doesn’t make the writer any more correct. In fact, it will only hasten their own professional demise as more people see how basesless and misinformed their opinions are.
http://www.nydailynews.com/spo.....ivera.html
This is a quality newspaper article. Too bad we can’t find stuff this that easily these days.
OK, this was odd. Disregard this. *Nothin to see here folks!*
*You can go about your business. Move along…move along…*
Funny to imagine the note that the younger Mr. Kabak got from the old man on reading this post…(No, not as old as I sound, Ben.)
To the points above, this has become my go-to place for Yankees news. Hard to rely on “MSM.” But these comments — to a certain extent — might be cases of just preaching to the choir?
Thanks for the work that the 3 of you guys do on this blog.
Good stuff. Like pretty much everybody here (I think), I use twitter/espn/lohud for general news, but then immediately come here for both the analysis in the articles and the dialogue in the comments. I think RAB is something of a Renaissance-style salon of baseball discussion. I lovelovelove a lot of the pieces at TYU, PBP, and a few other places (**cough**M&A**cough**), but here we are not only blessed with three or four full-length, well-written articles per day, but there is also a constant back-and-forth in the comments, which is what print journalism lacks.
I think one of the reasons that sports coverage in print media seems to pander to a crowd that is much less interested in critical thinking is that people who tend to think more often have a lot of valid opinions in reaction to an article, which they can’t express in print media. This is, I think, why the best blogs are so far in front of the competition in terms of quality – every article is not just an article, but a conversation-starter, and the more critical thinkers there are in an audience, the better that discussion gets. I can’t think of any other place on earth where I would read not only a 1000-1500 word article, but also 350 oft-long (**whistles in faux-nonchalance**) comments four or five times a day.
The advantage of the internet is that the readers’ opinions can hold just as much weight as the writers’. If I’m reading a discussion about a topic that I have a lot of opinions about, I don’t feel like an ass for writing out seven or eight paragraphs (as long as they make sense in a somewhat coherent way) in response because I know people will actually read and respond to them. If you’re reading a newspaper article and you start responding to it, people will think you’re insane. Here, I think, people think I’m insane, but definitely less so than they would were I saying everything out loud.
Do you have any posts on your blog under 100k words?
I assume these are the warmups.
Does this mean that it is inevitable that I get a laptop if I want to read the baseball articles along with my morning cereal? That’s where it’s headed and I hate that thought. Anyway, I’m sure the migration of so much news to the internet keeps employees happy as it gives them something to do at the office besides work. For the record, though, I’d like to state that this was a very well-written and pertinent post.