The Washington Post sports department is no more. That really sucks for Nats fans and leaves the Nats coverage in limbo, especially after MASNs dissolution earlier in the year. This begs the question - who is covering the Nationals? I mean REALLY covering them, not covering them like me, giving out free content that's worth the price of admission.
I don't know about local TV stations which will presumably continue their usual light coverages of the team and local sports talk which will continue to talk and interview guys to fill time in the long summer. The Washington Times is unlikely to move from their position of AP aggregator with the occasional Nats column. Jessica Camerato is mlb.com's Nationals reporter and should be fine for game updates but any digging into the team comes with the news from Pravda caveat. The Athletic, one giant grift to earn its founders money while killing off local sports sections, never fulfilled it's "cover every team" promise and seems unlikely to do so. Perhaps though there will be a "DC" reporter - covering all the remaining teams until football season starts. I'm sure Dan Steinberg, former long-time Postie now in a management role over there, is at least considering it.
The best bet though probably is Mark Zuckerman taking things back to his beginnings. He's in a slightly different place now and probably has grander designs given the crash of the Post, but some sort of DC specific site with a dedicated Nats guy feels likely to me, if they can get it off the ground.
Such is the state of Nats coverage. And coverage is important. With no one holding their feet to the fire, with no one holding them at least sometimes publicly accountable, the management of the team can feel a bit freer to do whatever they want, and if whatever they want to do is make this team the Pirates then that's what they'll be.
Yeah there's plenty of coverage out there from guys like you Harper (no offense) who are great at analyzing the numbers, but have zero connection to the front office or clubhouse. Every team needs a couple of those, and they can't be yes men that just write fluff. I think back to the scathing Svrluga article on Matt Williams losing the clubhouse and damn I'm going to miss that type of reporting
ReplyDeleteI think there is a market for in-depth, daily coverage of the Nationals, but we might have to pay for such coverage until there is enough ad revenue to cover costs. I'd love to see coverage of all the local teams in one place. Harper's coverage is invaluable, but as Cautiously Pessimistic notes, Harper does not have a connection to the clubhouse or the front office.
ReplyDeleteThe problem here, as in so many areas of the media, is that reporting is slow and expensive and uncertain and that punditry flows free from the tap. (Sometimes literally free like Harper's posts, but even when someone gets $300k a year for a weekly column, that's way more content at considerably less cost than you would ever get from actual reporting.)
ReplyDeleteEven worse, at least on short timeframes, the punditry probably actually drives more engagement and actually is higher value content from the POV of the media business.
On longer timeframes, of course, the ecosystem breaks and there's no value to be had anywhere. Without the reporting infrastructure to hold everything up, the paper is going to collapse like Forbes and Newsweek and so many others have. It's wild to me how shortsighted capital (by which I mean the aggregate of the people who control it) often is. Even on their own terms, they are just so stupid and so reckless so much of the time.
The thing that gets me is that Bezos and other billionaires always say, "the news may not be profitable, but that's okay because I have billions to lose." But then it turns out that, like everything else, they bought it in order to destroy it.
ReplyDelete100%
DeleteUnlike Rupert Murdoch w/ the WSJ, Bezos doesn't actually value his paper enough to preserve it in a form resembling that which made it worthwhile in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about it... is that Bezos is not really in the news business. Owning the paper gave him cache in DC of course, but his real business is Blue Origin and AWS, and the very large federal contracts they have. (Which are subject to regulatory compliance). The Post is a casualty of his need to protect them.
After it's gone, one really misses the Mark Zuckerman content at MASN. It was often-times bland and superficial -- but you got a daily serving of team happenings, paid for by the teams' media company. Now, without the Post and MASN, there are a few blogs and the team's MLB site -- that's it. The Athletic isn't going to cover the Nats day-to-day.
ReplyDeleteIts a mini-study of whats happening to media. AI can listen in on the radio broadcast -- and prep a two pager. And I guess we'll all be fine.
Just wait. In a few more iterations, Sora will be able to listen to the game and produce a video recreation for you
Deleteahhh Watch-men. got it.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit - not the cleanest of work
DeleteIt's bleak. I'm hopeful Zuckerman can start his own thing again, but there's less interest in the team, because of suckage, than the last time he lost his job.
ReplyDeleteMind-boggling that the professional baseball team in the nation's capital won't have a dedicated beat writer.
TalkNats is a blog site that does some real reporting. The proprietor does seem to have some real sources - they've been credited for breaking news by some of the national guys/MLBTR. They're sending someone to Spring Training (for a week not the whole time). They are behind a (modest) paywall. Steve does have a pretty impressive take on his own ability to run a baseball team, but that's hardly rare (cue the Rocky Bridges quote).
ReplyDeleteAlright. I’ll start passing the hat around. Any small contribution you guys can make will go a long way in our efforts to send Harper to Spring Training so we can get some real boots on the ground, quality reporting. Make us proud, Harper.
ReplyDeleteMan, all I want to do in March is sit in a ballpark in Florida and lazily watch baseball but it's without question my busiest month of the year.
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