My journalism background is in sports, so I am not happy that politics has become the new sports in terms of online media innovation. Only a decade ago, sports was the change leader online. Today, newsroom sports departments have ceded that role to politics.
This is evident in the sports sections of two newspapers that still plop onto my driveway in the morning: the Washington Post and USA Today.
First, let’s take a look at the Post’s sports section. And realize that the Post knows its print sport section isn’t complete. (On some days, they’ll even admit it isn’t timely.) They just aren’t doing much to direct readers and users to where sports news can be both complete and timely: online.
Here’s what I saw in the Sunday March 23 Post sports section:
- Where’s the URL? My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, but I’ll be darned if I can find the Post’s sports URL on page D1 — or anywhere else in the 16-page section for that matter. I’ll be darned if I can find any hint that the Post delivers information via any other platform elsewhere on the first page — or most pages inside the section. In fact, it’s not until I get to the half-page Scoreboard on D14 that I finally found a non-specific URL: Complete results at washingtonpost.com.
- Missing ties to other media. Although numerous Sunday games are mentioned in a variety of ways on D1, I had to go to D2 and match up the events with the “On the Air” item for that information. There is no “On the Internet” item.
- At last, an e-mail! On page D2, in former longtime sports editor George Solomon‘s “Sports Week” column, I see the section’s first online mention: “Have a comment or question? Reach me at talkback@washpost.com.” Then, on D3, Christian Davenport requests items for his “The Outside Line” feature by providing an e-mail address: davenport@washpost.com. Thanks, guys!
- Expanded schedules? On D4 and D5-6 the Post published limited schedules, standings and leaders for NHL and and NBA pages — but no URLs for expanded versions of that content. Also, the NBA page offered about three inches of Washington Wizards statistics. I’ll bet there was more online, but they offered no path to get there.
- Where’s that blog? Dan Sternberg, who writes (with attitude) the D.C. Sports Bog, one of many excellent Post blogs, provides an excerpt in the March 23 paper. But — you guessed it — there is no URL!
- Just scratching the surface. Throughout the section I saw numerous opportunities to provide URLs for more information and greater depth online: NCAA regional basketball brackets, a chart about Duke, team rosters and results, short-form box scores, prep schedules… Also, were are no e-mail addresses for the 32 staff-written stories and features.
…On to USA Today’s print sport section, which just debuted its new Page3.0 feature. (“Your connection to sports coverage online and on TV.”) This replaces the small strip that used to sit across the bottom of the page like an old piece of your grandmother’s furniture nobody notices. (I question this whole concept: Why isn’t the entire section “3.0?”)
On Mar. 21, here’s what I noticed in that section:
- Some URLs. I counted six URLs to related sites — although only one was outside the USA Today family. The www.usatoday.com URL appears in the upper left-hand corner of the first sports page, where it has been for most if not all of the site’s history. There’s also a cellphone alert and two online refers on the first page. And there are others throughout the section — but not as many as there could be. Inconsistent at best.
- E-mails? Like the Post, USAtoday staff bylines do not include e-mail addresses. I found one staff e-mail address listed, for Michael Hiestand.
To clarify, I’m not just complaining about the opportunities both papers are missing. I’m genuinely concerned.
Post columnist Tony Kornheiser likes to say, “We kid because we love.” I hope my friends at the Post and USA Today know that I constructively criticize because I love newspapers — especially their newspapers. But I am not kidding about the continued lack of cross-platform integration I see at two of the nation’s best — and most important — sports sections.
Staffing apparently is not the problem. My friend Jon DeNunzio, now the online sports editor at washingtonpost.com and the former prep sports editor for the Washington Post, tells me that he updates the site with the help of five full-time producers, one part-time producer, and an occasional intern. Most online sports desks would consider that level of staffing a luxury. Similarly, the Post’s print copy desk has about six full-time and four part-time staffers. On a typical night there are three or four staffers on the Web sports desk; five copy editors, one night editor and two or three layout editors on the paper’s sports desk.
It is my belief that until the online and print copy-desk operations are fully merged on a 24/7 basis, they cannot consider themselves truly integrated. It’s the future. But it should be the present.
“Thanks to trends in the media business, I think integration is going to happen, like it or not,” said DeNunzio. “The question, to me, is: Can it be managed well so Web decisions (made well by Web journalists at places like washingtonpost.com) are still made that way, and are not overtaken by print concerns. The other side of that is important, too — we still need to make smart print decisions as well.”
I’ll return to “Web decisions” vs. “print decisions” another time. I think DeNunzio is really talking about immediacy vs. traditional journalism values.
But DeNunzio and I are on the same page — the real and necessary Page3.0.
