Friday, Jan. 02, 2009

Pro sports needs newspapers: And so does democracy

By Ken Robertson, Herald Executive Editor

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has reached an interesting conclusion.

“Pro Sports Need Newspapers.”

That’s the headline of his Dec. 24 blog at http://blogmaverick.com

Despite the proliferation of websites focused on pro sports and thousands of blogs written every day about pro sports, Cuban believes newspapers are essential.

Why? “The newspapers reach our hardest to connect to customers, the casual fan,” he believes.

“More importantly, from a business perspective, because (newspapers’) customer base skews older, they don’t use the net as a primary source of data,” he adds.

Newspaper readers “pay our bills,” he warns his fellow team owners, so they can’t afford not to try to keep newspapers alive. His solution is for the pro leagues to fund sportswriters for major market newspapers.

Which, of course, would undercut the writers’ credibility and independence from any financial pressure a team’s front office might apply to a newspaper when a less than favorable story appears.

In addition, he ignores the fact that a major part of every team’s fan base doesn’t live in an individual team’s market. When the Seattle Seahawks wanted to build their new stadium, voters in Benton and Franklin counties were strong supporters of the plan, while virtually all of rural Eastern Washington voted against using any state money.

Buried down in his blog is an alarming statement for all sports teams: “The online sports marketplace is starting to have its challenges as well.”

Domestic traffic on those sites is not really growing and advertising is falling for all but a handful of the largest sites, he adds.

“The problems that are trashing newspaper profitability are creeping up on websites,” he writes.

Welcome to the recession, Mr. Cuban. Welcome to the notion that spending on advertising is among the first victims in a recession.

Next, he needs to look beyond his narrow niche of pro sports.

As much as pro sports may need newspapers, participative democracy needs them even more.

Strong communities need news reports that will tell the “casual” citizen — to borrow from Mr. Cuban — what’s happening in their cities and towns, their schools, their courts, their city halls and fire stations.

Fifteen-second TV soundbites make for 15-second solutions, and blogdom’s shortcoming is that, as currently practiced, it’s too much about stylish one-upmanship and too little about responsible discussion.

Without consistent coverage and solid information, ordinary people can’t take part in our democracy with any kind of understanding of how it works. Democracy is too complex to follow without a little depth to the news and information the individual citizen requires to be a participant.

— Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com

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