Flashes of Panic

(It’s time to start disregarding the time-stamps on these entries. I’m writing this in the terminal at O’Hare, so I’m already an hour off; it’s possible that I won’t be able to post it until I’m in Japan.)

When I mentioned the pathetic state of athletics journalism (“track writing”) in the U.S., I shouldn’t really be talking about journalism so much as the market for it. There are some excellent writers working in track: Kenny Moore, John Brant, Dick Patrick, John Crumpacker, etc. The problem is where their work appears. Moore and Brant are almost exclusively magazine and book writers; Patrick, though he writes for USA Today, is representative of many newspaper track writers in that he’s increasingly restricted in his available space and his travel budget. As a result, the bulk of the track and field stories in most newspapers are:

• Focused on a single local athlete, e.g. an Indy Star article on Bob Kennedy’s retirement.
• Wire stories written by stringers local to the event, who may or may not know the sport and definitely aren’t encouraged to use words on things like “color” or “vivid description.”
• Only run once a year in connection with some major event, such as one of the major marathons.

This is where the web is supposed to come in and save the day, right? It’s true that it’s now possible to tie together all the stories that fit in the first and third categories, above, and come up with something that looks like comprehensive coverage. But the fact is that you have to work for that; you have to be interested. What the IAAF (and USATF, and most fans of the sport,) would like to see is new fans—they’d like to see stars like Kenenisa Bekele get some regular face-time on ESPN, for example.

ESPN programming, I figure, is driven by two questions: “Will we sell advertising on it?” And, “Will it get good ratings?” The questions come in that order—that’s why highly-rated track programming (track telecasts actually get good ratings for sport events,) loses out to the likes of professional fishing, which apparently sells loads of advertising. (This also explains televised golf.)

It would also help to see a lot of regular track articles appearing in print outlets like the NY Times, Sports Illustrated, and so on. That’s not happening, because those pages and sports sections are filled with wall-to-wall coverage of American football, baseball, basketball. If you launched a Marca or Gazetto dello Sport in the U.S., it would be dominated by the big professional team sports.

The idea of bringing me to Fukuoka is to lower the cost barriers that would otherwise prevent some outlets from covering World Cross. I’m not sure I’m a terribly good investment; I didn’t get assignments from the NYT, Washington Post, or Sports Illustrated. I think most of the outlets I’m writing for would be covering the meet in some way, even if I wasn’t going. I’d like to think I’m improving the quality, but we’ll see.