I was going to write this item for my Friday newspaper column, then I said to myself, "Self, no one cares about this other than people in the media or media junkies, so why not stick it in the blog, which is predominantly read by people in the media or media junkies."
So here it is: Did you know there are fewer than 10 newspapers in the nation that employ a full-time sports media and/or business columnist? This is way, way down from 10-20 years ago, presumably because as newspapers attempt to get leaner and meaner, the media beat is among the first things to go.
So there are fewer people doing my job than there are United States Senators or NFL head coaches. We're roughly as common as Supreme Court justices.
All four New York papers have full-time people in the role, perhaps no surprise in the media headquarters of the galaxy.
Check this out, though: Since Newsday was the second newspaper with a full-time TV sports writer (Stan Isaacs, 1978) and since the first (The Boston Globe) no longer has one, that makes Newsday the paper with the oldest continually appearing full-time sports media column.
That's all. Carry on, members of the media and media junkies.
Comments (10)
I'd be interested to see what the ten newspapers are, and what the criteria is for "full-time."
The Buffalo News TV critic, Alan Pergament, has been there for 25 years, and for most if not all of that time, he's run a weekly "sports on the air" column. The online edition seems to go out of its way to hide the thing, but it's a good source on the same kinds of goings-on which you seem to like.
And if that last name sounds familiar, I know he's originally from Long Island (possibly from my own home town of East Meadow) and I believe he's related to the old hardware-store moguls.
Many newspapers have guys who do a weekly media column or perhaps more than one a week depending on news development, but these guys usually havve other duties the rest of the time.
The papers that I know of with full-time sports media beats:
Newsday
NY Times
NY Daily News
NY Post
USA Today
Wall Street Journal (mostly business stuff)
LA Daily News
Chicago Tribune (split between two guys, six months each)
Dallas Morning News (with some other duties mixed in)
Other papers with regular people writing on these topics include:
Miami Herald
San Diego Union-Tribune
Houston Chronicle
LA Times
Albany Times-Union
Buffalo News
And I'm sure many, many others, including Boston, Washington, etc.
Here in D.C., the Washington Times has a full-time sports business reporter who writes a weekly column and also has a blog. (Though he's not nearly as prolific as you, Neil.) He only touches on sports media once in a while, though.
The Post used to have a full-time sports biz guy, but they eliminated the beat.
The NY Daily News eliminated the beat about a year ago.
Raissman was reassigned to do SNY puff pieces and anti-Yankees propaganda articles. Besides, he suffers from short man's disease.
You forgot your co-hort at your soon to be ex-sister paper "The Orlando Sentinel," David Darling. Oh and your other sister, The Baltimore Sun. No more LA Times unless you count what (S)he says you should watch on weekends.
It should be noted that both Potter Stewart and Phil Mushnick can define pornography when they see it.
Do Orlando and Baltimore have people doing this full time or people who do it as part of their duties????
Neil, the only time I see Ray Frager (Baltimore) and Dave Darling in the paper is on Friday when they do their columns. Frager does a blog too sometimes. Also, Salt Lake City Deseret News has a Friday column done by their fulltime TV writer and the Toronto Star has a full time TV Sports column done by Chris Zelkowski (?) at least 3 times a week.
Two more, my bad. St. Louis has one written by Dan Caesar and Minneapolis/St. Paul has one written by a guy named Zulgad who also does the Vikings stories.
Many papers do Friday only media columns, I guess. Maybe that's enough. Maybe the NY papers are the ones that are nuts.