As we’re always saying around here, there’s a great role for blogs in hockey coverage, particularly as the league has experienced reduced mainstream NHL coverage in recent years.  But of course, reading blogs is no substitute for the many great sports journalists that continue to cover the game, and we certainly read all of them religiously.

So just imagine if a major national media source—for instance The Globe & Mail in Canada or The Boston Globe in the US—completely stopped covering the sport of hockey. Those writers and their in-depth stories would be missed greatly.  And that’s almost exactly what happened this week at USA Today.

But not to the NHL… to the NBA. 

In one fell swoop, USA Today bought out every journalist they had covering the NBA for the newspaper. 

Courtesy of Neil Best at Newsday, I saw Richard Prince’s article at the Maynard Institute:

Four veteran black sports journalists are taking a voluntary buyout offered at USA Today, wiping out its NBA coverage team, the USA Today staffers told Journal-isms on Saturday.

Somehow it’s so much easier to imagine that happening to the NHL staffers.

Anyone want to start a basketball blog...?