“What does the possible loss of so many baseball beat writers mean for readers?”

Jim Caple of ESPN asked this question in his article today about the loss of print news, which also means the loss of jobs. The loss of jobs is never a good thing and I’m not wanting to talk about that here. Caple was speaking specifically about the loss of writing jobs covering baseball teams. So with apologies to those reporters (and friends), I’ll keep this column to one very small aspect of the struggling newspaper industry: What does the possible loss of so many baseball beat writers mean for readers? The obvious answer here is that they have fewer sources to read, which is also never a good thing. However, many of these sources were so full of shit that they weren’t worth reading in the first place. Is anybody going to shed a tear when the likes of Gordon Whittenmeyer, Chris DeLuca, Phil Rogers and Paul Sullivan are no longer to write about baseball in the print editions? I’ll feel sorry they have lost their jobs and their incomes they use to support themselves and their families, but I will not feel sorry for any of them for no longer being able to write about the Chicago Cubs. None of them have added any valuable input over the years and have done more damage than they realize. People are dumber because of them. There should be no tears shed when these people are no longer able to pollute the minds of baseball fans. For a good decade now, readers have double dipped, enjoying free content provided by newspapers along with the insight, analysis and differing viewpoints of bloggers and Internet stats sites. But if newspapers no longer can provide expensive daily coverage, what will be lost? Or as John Hickey, who was the P-I’s Mariners beat writer (the online version does not have one), asked, who will report the news? The news will be missed, but it will be replaced by others. Part of the problem here is that so few beat reporters actually reported the news. If more had done so, the loss would be much greater, but for a very long time now the beat reporters have used their columns as a way to write opinion-based articles. Sure, many of those articles have bits of news sprinkled throughout, but they’re mostly opinions these days. The fact of the matter is that a majority of these beat reporters could boil the actual news they report down to a few twitter messages per day. I’m pretty sure that can be replaced in some way, at some point. When I was a beat writer, I put a great deal of effort and thought into my game stories, those 800-words-or-so diary entries that told readers what happened each day and why it was important. I’m well aware that baseball writers have done this since the game began. Long before television and even radio, baseball fans only way to keep up with the game they loved was to read about it in the newspaper or attend the game. The stories about the games were very valuable as it, in a sense, put the reader in the stands. If you get a chance, go to the library and read some baseball writers from the 1900s or 1910s. The way they described the game was so much different than it is today. Their words were all many had and those words are still being used as a way to sort through play by play data though it was not available at that time. That’s how much work those writers put into their work. Radio and television changed that. People could now hear or see the game so the stories weren’t as important. The beat reporter has basically become a source for news in the sense that we get quotes from the manager, coaches and players. And even doing that simple task, the beat reporters have failed miserably. I don’t need, and you don’t need, a reporter telling us why certain events in a game were important today. We don’t need this for a variety of reasons. MLB Extra Innings streams the games live into living rooms across the country and MLB.tv does the same thing. There is play by play data ready available throughout the game so these stories aren’t important. They’re relatively useless at this point. There are so many other ways to get the same information that their jobs aren’t necessary in the manner in which they have been performing their jobs. Why Jim Caple or any other writer thinks such and such is important isn’t valuable information in a game recap that is supposedly telling us the news. For one, I don’t trust 99% of the beat reporters to understand why something might or might not be important. Perhaps Jim Caple is among the few who do understand these things, but I want the news. I want some quotes and I don’t want his opinions. There are a thousand blogs full of opinions and a few of them have far greater insight than any of these beat reporters will ever have. I have no doubt that all of these reporters work hard as Caple said he did. I’m sure their job is much more difficult than we realize. I’m positive that dealing with egotistical athletes isn’t the most enjoyable thing in the world to do and some of them do an excellent job providing the news will little or no bias. The problem is that those people are the exception. While I don’t like the quality of work most of these people turn in, I won’t ever say that someone like Paul Sullivan doesn’t work hard. Yes, I think he and others have gotten lazy, but is that really any different than anybody else who is well settled into their profession? Probably not and to be honest, I’m only basing this on an opinion so I really don’t know. Game stories usually receive big headlines and photos on the front page of the sports section. But I must admit I seldom read many game stories beyond the introduction these days. Exactly. There’s just no reason to. Another great service beat writers provide fans is humanizing the players, telling us about their personalities and their backstories. They make the players more than simply numbers on the field. If by humanize you mean treat a player (Milton Bradley) like shit, then I agree. Could bloggers provide the same information if given proper access? Yes, certainly. But the more important question is whether they could afford the financial demands of daily access. It would be challenging enough for bloggers just to carve out the necessary eight-hour time slot to use that access at home games. Could they also pay the staggering lodging, travel and food expenses for 81 road games plus spring training? That’s very true, but one way to solve this is for organizations to hire several different bloggers and give them the same access and same financial reward that the beat reporters current employers are providing. This obviously means more money for the organization to spend, but I’m pretty sure they could afford it. I’m not suggest this is the only one and I can guarantee you that I have zero interest in being one of those bloggers. Frankly, if the Cubs asked me to do that, I’d be disappointed that they ask me when there are several other Cubs bloggers more intelligent than I. We’re going to be reading a lot of articles like this over the next year or two so get ready. I think Caple did a pretty good job with this, but I fear others will do so poorly. The fact is that the newspapers are dying and sooner than later there will be none left. I don’t know the time line for this, but it’s inevitable. My parents love the newspaper and will be upset when they no longer get one delivered to their home, but most people my age and younger will be mostly unaffected by this. I read the local paper here, but I get far more news online than I do from the local one. I do hope that we don’t read a lot of articles about how so and so was such a great beat reporter. The odds of that being a true statement are pretty small. Sure, there were undoubtedly some really good ones just like there are some really bad ones. Some of them will be missed, but most will not be.