The L.A. News Group is sending no one to the Beijing Olympics, barring some late change of heart. Meaning that the MediaNews-owned ring of suburban dailies has gone from three reporters at both the Sydney and Athens games (of 2000 and 2004) … to two at the Torino winter games (2006) … to zero at Beijing, this summer.
I can understand not wanting to spend the money (probably about $5,000 for one person, bare bones) to go to Beijing, but isn’t there some base line of commitment to news gathering … beyond which you no longer have the slightest credibility?
I think LANG is at that point. Actually, the whole increasingly feeble print market is about there.
If what I’m hearing is correct, the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register will be the only L.A.-area newspapers with people at the Beijing Games. Riverside isn’t going, at last word. I’m fairly sure Ventura isn’t going. And if LANG is whiffing on the event … well, that makes for a tiny contingent of print people coming out of the nation’s No. 2 media market.
What will happen, as always, is that once the Olympics begin editors will realize it is Topic A. As well as Topics B, C and D, during those two-plus weeks in August. And they will rue not having someone there to cover the local softball pitcher/marathoner/sprinter — and do scads of blogging, maybe some podcasts and whatever else they would be willing to do on the ‘net side.
Particularly damaging to the LANG papers is abandoning its three hard-earned credentials. One through the Daily News, one from the MediaNews collective, a third through San Bernardino. (Yes, I was scheduled to go to my 13th Olympics). When a news agency gives back credentials … it often never gets them back from the tightly controlled allotment. Turning away from those credentials is basically telling the U.S. Olympic Committee, “We are no longer significant players.”
The Register’s one or two people will work hard to make sure OC sports people are covered, and LAT will try to be “local” to everyone and occasionally do a good job at it, but the local-local angle that LANG reporters filed for the various LANG entities — Long Beach, San Gabriel, Ontario, Pasadena, etc. … that’s just not going to get done. Except in weird, half measures such as phone calls, e-mails, perhaps. Truth is, athletes don’t have much interest in media outlets who don’t care enough to be on site.
It’s too bad. For readers, athletes, their families. And it is another sign of the rapid decline of the LANG organization.
COREX ADD: David Lassen of the Ventura County Star informs me he has Beijing-bound as part of a four-person Scripps News Group. That’s good for David and good for Ventura County readers, because he will see after the hometown athletes. That makes a Greater L.A. contingent of David, the 2-3 people OC sends … and however many LAT decides it can afford.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Mike Rappaport // Apr 12, 2008 at 10:02 AM
Paul, you are absolutely right. I suppose LANG can justify this by saying the Denver Post or the San Jose Mercury-News (assuming they’re going) can give the group whatever it needs, but you know as well as I do that reporters in Denver and San Jose won’t give the attention to others’ local kids they deserve.
Fact is, LANG ceased to be significant years ago. The whole idea of having one reporter cover Dodgers home games for something like eight or nine different papers has had a hugely negative effect.
So which of the group will survive?
Maybe ultimately just the Daily News, as a poor second choice to the Times.
2 Bill // Apr 12, 2008 at 8:10 PM
Yeah, the Denver Post really gives two craps about what San Bernardino/Ontario/Pasadena/SFV wants. They barely can cover what they are doing themselves. LANG became insignificant the day it came into existence. In five years, none of LANG or BANG could exist. Or maybe just shadows of themselves. Which is scary considering they are all hollow, empty shells thanks to Singleton and his hatchet men like Butler and asshat Lambert.
3 Char Ham // Apr 13, 2008 at 11:37 AM
From what’s being said, consistently from their questionable business practices to lack of logistics to the staff (moving them around) to now cutting coverage I wonder if LANG is committing “corporate welfare.” Corporate welfare meaning have # years of losses to write off on their taxes then sell the newspapers to somebody else who will just like LANG, play the corporate welfare game.
I’ve worked for employers who pull this. One employer pulled this by getting grant money for “retraining” which consisted of basic math skills, and this was @ an aerospace firm, where you were ALREADY expected to have this in order to qualify for a position.
I’ve seen this too many times, and you wonder why this is heading.
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