Mike Chen's Hockey Blog
Entries with the tag: Media
The Fate Of Beat Writers
by Mike Chen on 03/09/09 at 04:20 PM ET
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247WallStreet (via Time) posted a story today about the next ten major newspapers to potentially undergo significant upheaval. What does that mean? Disappearing all together (like the Rocky Mountain Daily News) or going all-digital on a trimmed staff. It’s all part of the digital shift in media. Newspaper subscriptions are way down because people don’t have a need for a daily paper anymore. Because of that, advertising dollars drop way down and suddenly the parent companies are looking at huge losses.
How does that affect the everyday hockey fan? Well, while we may no longer have any more need for game recap stories by beat writers (AP reports and instant online highlights have killed that necessity), the most valuable thing I get out of each beat writer is their blog. I grew up with the San Jose Mercury News and I cut my subscription to that about two years ago since I could read it for free on the go either on my computer or on my phone. However, David Pollak’s Working The Corners blog is an invaluable source of gameday information and insider highlights.
That being said, if 247WallStreet is right, we may be losing significant team coverage as just about all of these papers have assigned a team beat writer with a blog similar to Pollak’s. Here’s the list:
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Tags: Media, Newspapers,
