Letter On The L.A. Times Sports Section Complains Of Cuts
I feel indebted to reader Jon Roe, who wrote a letter published last Saturday in the L.A. Times Sports Section.
"Apparently, there's some sort of cost-cutting austerity budget being implemented at The Times Sports Department," Roe wrote. "The one-sentence snippets in the National League "Roundup" on Wednesday were beyond belief."
Amen! Thank goodness, some readers are noticing that the Sports section has been cut back horribly under Tribune ownership.
This is California. A comprehensive Sports section is important in this state, and yet at the L.A. Times, they often have much too long a Calendar section, while Sports, which has been drawing less advertising it seems of late, is cut to the bone.
How are the newspapers going to survive the present downturn? I daresay the answer is not to cut back on Sports.
One problem is there are so many more sports these days, most of them commanding little loyalty from the readers. But when it comes to football, baseball and basketball, there ought to be no cuts. Years ago, I remember the Sunday football coverage, the results of all the college football games, was a delight. Now, many interesting games are left out altogether. and we seldom if ever see the tables of team schedules and results we used to get. Ivy League football, for one, has virtually disappeared, yet there are many Ivy League graduates in Southern California. Yet nothing schools like South Florida get good coverage.
Someone at the L.A. Times has to determine what's important to readers and what's not. The paper for the most part remains big; it's only a matter of giving back a few pages to Sports and many omissions can be rectified.
A modest proposal: The Chicago Tribune should be cut in half, and the space given to the L.A. Times. If the Chicagoans don't like it, let them eat cake!
"Apparently, there's some sort of cost-cutting austerity budget being implemented at The Times Sports Department," Roe wrote. "The one-sentence snippets in the National League "Roundup" on Wednesday were beyond belief."
Amen! Thank goodness, some readers are noticing that the Sports section has been cut back horribly under Tribune ownership.
This is California. A comprehensive Sports section is important in this state, and yet at the L.A. Times, they often have much too long a Calendar section, while Sports, which has been drawing less advertising it seems of late, is cut to the bone.
How are the newspapers going to survive the present downturn? I daresay the answer is not to cut back on Sports.
One problem is there are so many more sports these days, most of them commanding little loyalty from the readers. But when it comes to football, baseball and basketball, there ought to be no cuts. Years ago, I remember the Sunday football coverage, the results of all the college football games, was a delight. Now, many interesting games are left out altogether. and we seldom if ever see the tables of team schedules and results we used to get. Ivy League football, for one, has virtually disappeared, yet there are many Ivy League graduates in Southern California. Yet nothing schools like South Florida get good coverage.
Someone at the L.A. Times has to determine what's important to readers and what's not. The paper for the most part remains big; it's only a matter of giving back a few pages to Sports and many omissions can be rectified.
A modest proposal: The Chicago Tribune should be cut in half, and the space given to the L.A. Times. If the Chicagoans don't like it, let them eat cake!
posted by Ken Reich at 11:53 AM
3 Comments:
Ivy league football. hahahaha Gee, I can just see the big circulation boost that the Times will get because Yale football is on the front page! What other ideas do you have to increase Circ? How about lawn bowling, cricket, squash, or women's field hockey?
Yes the cutback in the sports section is very shortsighted. I understand the NHL strike was welcomed because there was no way Dwyer could fit coverage of the sport into his limited space if the games had been played. He has to get permission to expand the section beyond, I believe, 8 pages.
So we have a problem and the answer is to lessen the content that sells many copies of the TIMES. Great idea.
The Times against USC? You got to be kidding! Where's the hard hitting articles on the sexual assaults, exctasy arrests, transfers of top recruits, and the obvious SAT fraud committed by two of their top local (Long Beach) recruits who had one of their HS teammates take the test for them out in Hesperia? The Times has treated the Trojans with kid gloves the last few years. We won't even get into the disgusting way that USC is soaking longtime supporters by forcing them to pay $20K to keep their football seats.
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