Is The Times Ignoring the Boxing Ring?

By Clark Hoyt - The New York Times

Larry Merchant, a former newspaper sports writer and editor who now comments on boxing on HBO, recently wrote to Tom Jolly, the sports editor of The Times, to protest the paper’s relative lack of coverage of boxing.

Merchant’s letter and Jolly’s reply provide a fascinating glimpse into issues that transcend the immediate question of whether The Times should devote resources to a sport that even an ardent admirer like Merchant acknowledges is no longer mainstream. In many ways, Merchant and Jolly are discussing the role of a general interest newspaper in a dramatically changed world.

I thought readers would be interested in their exchange. Here it is, Merchant first, then Jolly, then a reply from Merchant:

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I’m writing to protest The Times’s policy on boxing. It virtually ignores the sport.
I do not long for the good old days of boxing. I long for present day coverage that acknowledges that it still exists and occasionally flourishes.

True enough, boxing is no longer mainstream. Yet it has a devoted following that 6 to 10 times a year reaches beyond that. Big fights generate big numbers: crowds, TV ratings, pay-per-view dollars.

In contrast to the Times, even the Wall Street Journal covers major events, and another national newspaper, USA Today, covers those and other significant fights. The Post and the Daily News also follow fighters of local interest.

Horse racing is no longer mainstream either, but The Times routinely provides extensive coverage of high-profile races.

The author Tom Hauser, who writes for an on1ine boxing site, recently examined The Times’s sports pages during July, August and September. He found, among other curiosities, just four bylined articles on boxing — three on women in boxing in the coming Olympics and in India, and an apparent rewrite of a press release announcing a tournament on Showtime.

During that period, the Times ignored the comeback of Floyd Mayweather, Jr., the top American fighter, vs. Juan Manuel Lopez, the lightweight champion regarded as one of the best fighters in the world, which was bought in over a million homes. And it ignored the top American heavyweight prospect, Chris Arreola, attempting to become the first heavyweight of Mexican descent to win a heavyweight title vs. Vitali Klitschko, one of the famous Klitschko brothers who have dominated the division in the 2000s, which pulled the highest rating on HBO this year.

Earlier, The Times ignored Shane Mosley, one of the best fighters of his time, challenging welterweight champion Antonio Margarito before the largest crowd of any event ever at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and the subsequent suspension of Margarito for trying to load his gloves before the fight. And at Madison Square Garden, the paper ignored Miguel Cotto, a very popular fighter in New York, vs. titlist Joshua Clottey of the Bronx.

In July the Times ran multiple Associated Press briefs to record the tragic coincidence of violent deaths, by suicide or murder, of three notable prize fighters: Alex Arguello, an all-time great who was the mayor of Managua, Nicaragua; Arturo Gatti of Jersey City, one of the most celebrated fighters of modern times, and junior welterweight champion and ex-Olympian Vernon Forrest. One would have thought that a Times columnist or feature writer would have addressed and celebrated these passings.
Sports editor Tom Jolly told Hauser he has been to one prize fight in his life. His disinterest is palpable in the sports pages of the Times. I mentioned an article about a tournament on Showtime. Just Saturday former champion Jermain Taylor met an outstanding German, Arthur Abraham, in the first fight of that super middleweight tournament. It did not even get into the agate results of the Times. I doubt that Jolly knows, much less cares, that the last American Gold Medalist, Andre Ward, will fight the highest-ranked fighter in that class, Mikkel Kessler, next month.

Jolly did say that the Times will staff the Manny Pacquiao-Cotto match in November. Pacquiao is an Ali-like figure in the Philippines who was recently cited by Time magazine as one of t the 100 most influential people in the world. This will be Pacquiao’s 10th big fight in the U.S. That’s how long it took for The Times to discover him.

The Times is rightly celebrated for its mission to cover all the news. Its failure to recognize that boxing still resonates with many fans and readers, if not as many as before, seems personal and capricious. You should rethink this policy.
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Dear Larry,

Your latest email leaves me with a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t feeling. You say we don’t care about boxing and that when we do write about it, our stuff is lousy or late. Tough crowd!

Seriously, let me try to set the record straight on a few points.

1. If my news judgment is based on my attendance at events, I’m going to be spending a lot of time out of the office and, frankly, I’m going to be exhausted. Honestly, I just don’t get that as a fair measure of interest. Yes, I’ve only gone to one prizefight, but I’ve spent money to watch a number of pay-per-view fights; do I get any credit for that? I haven’t gone to a baseball game all season; but I did go to a WNBA game. Does that mean I’m uninterested in baseball and very interested in the WNBA? I’ve attended the Indy 500 five times, but never been to a Nascar race; do you see that reflected in our coverage?

2. You say that the Times ignored a number of big bouts, but as I explained in our last exchange on this subject, nearly all of them occurred late at night and, if they finished in time to make it into any papers, it was only for the last run. Most bouts are on Saturday night and our final edition for the national edition goes to press at 11 p.m. The final local edition closes at 12:30. The most noteworthy of the fights were included in briefs for those last papers, and all of the results appeared in our wire feed on nytimes.com/sports. We — and by that I mean the collective judgment of our senior editors — don’t believe it is in our best interest to send a reporter to an event for four or five days (the typical requirement for covering the pre- and post-fight story), when we can’t report on the actual event when it occurs. In other words, we’re being asked to send a reporter to, say, Las Vegas for four or five days to write about a fight that’s about to happen, and then write a follow in the Monday paper on a fight that occurred on Saturday night. We’re willing to do that if it’s a bout that transcends the core fan base, but there haven’t been many such fights since Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield passed their prime.

3. The notion that The Times covers “all the news” is a nice myth, but it is a myth. The Times used to publish all the shipping charts. The Times used to publish all the stock tables. The Times used to publish all the box scores from the NHL and NBA. Our world has changed, and we’ve changed with it. Our mission these days is to inform our readers about the most important and interesting news in sports, politics, business, foreign, national and local affairs.

4. Your reference to horse racing makes for a neat comparison with boxing. When the Triple Crown season rolls around, interest in horse racing grows exponentially beyond the usual fan base. But once that season ends, or the possibility of a Triple Crown winner ends, our coverage returns to minimal — except on issues related to the sport. Imagine, though, if there were three or four organizations that held competing races and that the top 3-year-olds were forbidden to race against each other because their organizations wouldn’t permit it. My guess is that people would quickly lose interest and our coverage would reflect that.

Boxing has three significant problems and none of them are a secret:

* There are no fighters that the general public is fascinated by, that have charisma, that transcend their sport. (Thomas Hauser suggested to me that if we wrote about more fighters, the public might care more about them. WNBA Commissioner Donna Orender tells me the same thing about her league. But, as I’m sure you know, it’s not our job to promote sports. And, Lord knows, boxing has plenty of promoters.)

* Few fights are available for viewing by the general public. They’re on cable or on pay-per-view and they’re on the air at 11 p.m. Eastern or later.

* The alphabet soup chaos of sanctioning bodies makes it next to impossible for people to identify the real champion and to compare how the fighters within a weight class compare at any given moment.

We’re watching the Showtime tournament to see if it’s a sign that things might start to change. But, let’s be honest, Taylor is clearly past his prime and the other fighters on Saturday were Abraham, Carl Froch and Andre Dirrell — not exactly household names.

All of which brings me back to the mission of The Times. We understand that people are passionate about certain sports. As I mentioned, I hear from the WNBA commissioner, but I also hear from horse racing fans, hockey fans, lacrosse fans, Yankees fans, Mets fans and every other kind of fan who thinks we’ve done wrong to their team or sport.

The truth is we’ve moved beyond the days when event coverage was our main purpose. In this cable/Internet age, most people who care about an event learn about it well before our paper arrives at their doorstep. They can also go to one of the many Web sites that specialize in particular sports.

Our goal is to tell readers something they don’t know, either through a news story on an issue or development that isn’t yet known to the general public, or, when news is well known, to explain why or how it happened.

Each of those decisions involves value judgments: Is this something the vast majority of our audience will care about? If not, is it something they would care about it if they understood it better? Is the information we can provide going to be better than what the wire service can provide? (In the case of many games or sports events, we think the wires can do just fine and that we will serve our readers better by assigning our reporters to do more in-depth reporting on something else.)
I hope you’ll enjoy our Manny Pacquiao story. We think it’s going to be quite good, even if it’s a bit late for your taste.

I continue to enjoy your work on HBO and look forward to watching Pacquiao-Cotto. Should be quite a show.
Best,
Tom
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Merchant later answered Jolly. Here is an excerpt:

Tom,
Thanks for your prompt response to my beef with your boxing policy. Unfortunately I feel that you countered with more rationalization than reason.

Re time restraints: I notice that baseball playoff games ran well toward midnight. Night matches at the U.S. Open often go beyond that. You still cover them. If you want to cover an event you cover it.

Re charisma: True, we don’t have any Alis, Foremans, Tysons or Leonards today. But we had Delahaoya for most of this decade, and my recollection is that the Times was absent for many of his big fights.

Re multi-champions in the same division: It can be aggravating and confusing, but there’s a collective wisdom in boxing that knows the true champion as opposed to title-holders). The rankings of Ring Magazine and Dan Rafael (ESPN.com) reflect the consensus. More important, there have always been so-called “paper champions” and fans have always decided which fighters they wanted to see, champions or not.
Big and important fights are to boxing what the Triple Crown is to racing, the majors to golf and tennis, the Tour de France to cycling, etc. Sold out arenas, TV ratings and pay-per-view numbers matter in boxing not because they mean it’s as popular as it once was but that it still matters on some occasions. Thanks for your time,

Larry Merchant

I know a lot of you may dislike Merchant, but I hope you can identify his intelligence here. Good for him. Very, very, very true words written by him that make absolute sense.

Tom DID give rationalization instead of reason. Baseball, US open, etc. can all run past the time a prize fight is over. If they want to cover and event, they cover it.

It's very irritating how many, many people of this era try and do away with print products and the old way of doing things, when that's the most prestigious way of doing them. What's going to be taken more seriously? A front page article of the Times covering a big fight, or an internet article telling you what happened?

I also thought it was very irritating how he was almost comparing the popularity of boxing to the popularity of the WNBA. What is he thinking?

It's the simple fact that people aren't as interested in boxing anymore, so they don't cover it. Well hell.. go cover a fight! Boxing was one of the most popular sports in the Nation years ago along with baseball and there's still millions out there that watch it all of the time.

Write some articles about it. Cover real sports.

Larry's the man....crusading for boxing all the time

nice exchange. sounds like jolly is a fight fan.

I'm a fan of Ol' Larry. I met him in Vegas nearly three years ago after the Hatton/Urango fight. Very nice guy. Really small and half drunk.

true.

i will also add to what u are saying...u won't see all the top celebs at a wnba game...nor will u see governors, senators..etc.etc...but they don't miss the big fights.

dont you think fights being at casinos has something to do with all the celebrities attending?

No, because they also attend the fights at Staples Center. When I was at Diaz-Marquez in Houston there were a ton of celebs in the crowd.

fights aren't always at casinos. Staples Center brings every celeb you can think of out of the wood works. A Nascar super race in L.A. would bring crickets.

Limited budget, limited interest...

If the Times subscribers started complaining, you'd see a policy change. The paper regularly polls its readership.The calls for boxing coverage by readers is probably as loud as the NASCAR crowd in LA.

I'd be curious to see a motivated soul reserach the claim that the Times has not covered DLH's major fights.

Then again, Merchant's grousing exposes less about the Times and more about Merchant being old as dirt. Nobody gives a fuk what the Times does any more.

Larry Merchant: Boxing's Mouthpiece

Boxing isn't in the Times because people aren't demanding it. The sport lost its mainstream popularity so it was taken out of papers. Get enough people to email the editor of the Times demanding boxing and it will return on a regular basis.

I'm a fan of the Times and of boxing, but Houser's article and Merchant's tirade to the Times is really barking up the wrong tree.

The Times was never the best paper for sports. It's the best paper for general news on a national and international front.

If you want a newspaper that covers sports on a national level there is only one to go to to ask for more boxing coverage and that is the USA Today and there website covers boxing.

Outside of that there are plenty of mainstream websites like ESPN.com and Yahoo sports to go to that have excellent boxing coverage.

If boxing had a national body overseeing it merchant would be perfect to be the boxing insider to lead that side of it.

Even if the times did start covering boxing I wouldn't bother buying it. Jolly is right in his correspondence with Merchant; the internet can move faster than newspapers, that is why newspapers sales are down. Why wait a day or two and buy a paper for news when you can type in a couple words and have your news instantly? kind of foolish by Jolly to admit his organizations method of providing news is no longer the best way.

Merchant doesn't need to be apart of a national body to help the sport. If he held some executive power with HBO (or even Showtime) he could make some serious waves. When HBO tried to give him the boot a couple of years ago and then tried to resign him, Merchant suggested taking over Boxing After Dark match making duties but Ross Greenburg turned him down.

Imagine if Merchant was the head matchmaker for Boxing After Dark or World Championship Boxing?

I don't buy any newspapers today. Here in Tampa we have a free paper called the TBT(owned by the St Pete Times and has a lot of their articles,) that I read Monday through Friday and the rest of time I'm on websites like NyTimes, USA Today, WSJ, Yahoo, and many others.

Who wants to buy a newspaper anymore? Because you are right in that the newspaper is a day old or more in its news. Plus with the Internet I can read as many different newpsapers as I want.

I don't know how many people know this but even the Times is going through layoffs. It's what it is these days. I think the best thing a newspaper can do today is stop printing and work on an effective website and sell advertising to make a profit. Newspapers are now archaic.

yeah, I don't read any newspaper regularly and the only ones that I do read sometimes are my college paper and the USA today. I mostly stick with news websites especially Yahoo and MSN.

I was also thinking about the idea of newspapers stop selling papers and instead focus on websites. Newspapers will never be completely gone but they can dedicate more time to another medium, an online website. With an online website, unlike a newspaper, you don't have to worry about how much space is dedicated to different stories. You can publish 10x the news online than you could in a paper.

that about sums it up. lock it down.

The New York Times is losing Readership at record paces. Its numbers have been dwindling large in the last few years alone. No one is buying it anymore. Probably because the NYTimes isn't reporting on things people want to read... and have an agenda anyway.

LOL...I guess NYT adapts by giving readers less.

This writer wouldn't even print what website Thomas Hauser writes for. It goes to show you how much they fear websites...and the NYT knows they can't compete with the websites.... so they have given up.

NewsPaper Media is DEAD!

It's losing circulation. I think readership has been fairly steady

thats the impression I got

I'm a former subscriber. In fact everyday I go to the NYTimes it says welcome to me by name. It used to offer premium content like the WSJ still does, but it lost readers so now all its income from the website comes from advertising. Plus every article in the print edition is online so why would anyone want to subscribe unless you are doing it to support the paper.

The WSJ is the only general newspaper(I guess it can be considered general loosely) though that is making a profit from premium content. But their readership can support it. A lot of people who subscribe to WSJ are in the business investment world. I doubt they will ever lose those type of subscribers.

I think the NYT's problem's with "premium" subscriptions have had the effect of retaining readers. A lot of people read the online edition because you don't have to pay for it...Therefore readership remains the same while circulation of the paper drops.

Most mid to large size newspapers do have solid web sites. However, web advertising rates are paltry compared to print. Web advertising isn't profitable enough (yet) to sustain a quality news gathering operation.

And, enjoy the days of reading newspaper content for free while you can. It won't last forever.

Unbelievably incorrect.

Print products are used to make a decision more than any other media out there.

wouldnt know, im a reader of the daily news

Glaxor wrote: NewsPaper Media is DEAD!

Ray responded with....



Really? "Unbelievable" you say!?

Ok, I will back it up. A quick google search:

From Today's headlines:

- Wall Street Journal said Thursday it was closing its Boston bureau

- Canwest says National Post could close after Friday

- The Hokubei Mainichi will print its last edition Friday, becoming the second Japanese American community newspaper based in San Francisco to fold in the last two months.

- Associated Newspapers’ free evening title London Lite is to close, parent company DMGT confirmed on Tuesday, two months after News International’s free thelondonpaper printed its last issue.


Really? "Unbelievable" you say!?
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Ok, now lets look at the Newspapers that have shut down already in 2009

Gannett Co. Inc.

Gannett Co. Inc. alone closed 7 newspapers in 2009:
And they are...
West Bloomfield Eccentric
Troy Eccentric
Rochester Eccentric
Southfield Eccentric
The Carson Times
Douglas Times
Fallon Star Press

GateHouse Media, Inc.
Number of newspapers the company closed in 2009: 8

They are....
The Daily Reporter
Dennis Pennysaver
Yarmouth Pennysaver
East Bridgewater Star
West Bridgewater Times
Whitman Times
Hanson Town Crier
Plymouth Bulletin

The Sun-Times Media Group - Number of newspapers closed in 2009: 12
They are...
Algonquin Countryside
Cary-Grove Countryside
Wauconda Courier
Arlington Heights Post
Elk Grove Times
Hoffman Estates Review
Palatine Countryside
Rolling Meadows Review
Schaumburg Review
Wheeling Countryside
Des Plaines Times
Mount Prospect Times

The Journal Register Company - Number of newspapers the company closed in 2009: 34

They are...
Bloomfield Journal
Windsor Journal
Windsor Locks Journal
Coatesville Ledger
Donegal Ledger
Downingtown Ledger
Doylestown Patriot
East Hartford Gazette
Elizabethtown Chronicle
Gazette Advertiser
Germantown Courier
Mount Airy Times Express
Harlem Valley Times
Millbrook Round Table
Voice Ledger
Hyde Park Townsman
The Independent
New Hope Gazette
Northern Star
Oxford Tribune
Parkesburg Post Ledger
Solanco Sun Ledger
Pawling News Chronicle
Petoskey Citizen-Journal
Putnam County Courier
Quakertown Free Press
Register Herald
The Town Meeting


And here are more newspapers that died this year: 2009

American Fork Citizen
Lehi Free Press
Lone Peak Press
Orem Times
Pleasant Grove Review
Baltimore Examiner
The Bethel Beacon
The Brookfield Journal
The Kent Good Times Dispatch
The Litchfield Enquirer
Big Sky Sun
The Bulletin
The City Star
Dakota Journal
The Democrat
East Iowa Herald
Fort Collins Now
Grapevine Sun
Hardee Sun
The Hershey Chronicle
Hill Country View
Iraan News
Jeanerette Enterprise
The Journal-Messenger
LA City Beat
Lake Elmo Leader
Lake Norman Times
Lakota Journal
Los Gatos Weekender
West San Jose Resident
Maricopa Tribune
McCamey News
The Milford Observer
Ming Pao New York
Ming Pao San Francisco
The Newton Record
Oak Cliff Tribune
The Rockingham News
Rocky Mountain News
Stillwater Courier
Vail Sun
Valley Journal
The Weekly Almanac

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That was 2009 alone! 2008 was Bad also, and 2007 was no walk in the park.

So again I wrote: NewsPaper Media is DEAD!

To which your response was: Unbelievably incorrect

Obviously, I was more than correct...you my friend are Unbelievably incorrect.... Not me.

The newspaper industry will never die, but it will never be in any form approaching the various boom periods.

It's similar to when a company restructures. With dropping circulation, the economy affecting print ads, the Internet still not yet a reliable source for enough revenue, newspapers will cut back...

Bureaus will close. There will be less emphasis on enterprise reporting. Most of the staff energy will go to local reporting, with news from elsewhere pooled in agreement with other newspapers.

There will always be news in some form, especially because newspapers drive other forms of coverage. National television news often gets its leads from the agenda set by that day's major papers. Many local television news and local radio stations are doing even worse than local newspapers -- they do little original reporting, instead following up on what was in print.

But there will be gaps. Coverage areas will shrink, and in those places you might see weeklies where there once were dailies, or you might see blogs pick up the slack to try to keep residents informed, though with the caveat emptor of reliability/accuracy.

Yes, things aren't good. The Baltimore Sun, where I first cut my teeth while I was in college, once had more than 400 people in its newsroom. That was only 10 years ago. Now it has about 150. It has gone from a major regional paper with its own foreign bureaus to the state's paper of record, in competition in Central Maryland with The Washington Post (and sharing some coverage with sports), with absolutely no bureaus anymore in the outlying counties.

It's rough out there. And this comes from a news reporter who's looking for another job...

Is that you Templeton?

No idea who that is... sorry!

Oops. Clearly, I haven't watched The Wire. Yet.

check it out

I said print products are NOT dead. Newspapers, Yellow Pages, even Magazines are used to make a purchase more than ANY other media out there.

I'm talking about connecting buyers and sellers (people with needs). Internet is used for reasearch primarly where as print maintains the leader in connecting businesses and homeowners/renters with needs.

Go grab your local newspaper and look in the services heading or grab your Official Yellow Pages and look in the Air Conditioning heading.

These guys pay thousands of dollars for ads there because they generate hundreds of calls every single month.

Small, Independent directories may die out because of real competition. This has happened throughout the history of the industry. None of the newspapers you have mentioned that have closed their doors are top players in their market, and you can check that.

Active Intermedia Measurement is my source.

"Its in my notes Augustus, its all in my notes!!!"

Print is on its way out though. As a person who loves to both read and write as much as I do I have learned to accept the inevitable. As we get more and more technology being created everyday the one thing that has remained constant in all this change is how much print is going out the window.

Think about it. In the future all of our newspapers, books, magazines, etc will be on digital media. Now I for one like the idea of being able to lie around and read a book in the comfort of my home, but as digital media continues to improve don't be surprised when a day comes when you will be able to lie around in the comfort of your home reading what might look like a normal book, but instead is a digital book that can be opened up to 1000's of books in the palm of your hand.

It's already happening with things like Kindle, but in the future this technology will be so good that these digital readers will have all types of written media and it will feel like having an old fashioned book in your hand. The internet and digital media is the future.

No one wants a phone book anymore. In fact here in Tampa they have recently decided to stop issuing out Yellow Pages unless requested. Most people look for stuff on the internet nowadays.

the WSJ is also a great paper. plus, other papers have yet to find the niche market that the WSJ and their editorial page found.. half of the country.

I don't know anyone who even has a printed copy of the yellow pages, or anyone under the age of 50 that subscribes to local newspapers.

I bet you get a package deal when you advertise with Dex or whatever it's called, no one only wants to be in print, you need to be online.

The newspaper industry is certainly evolving, and going through some much needed streamlining, but it's far from dead. All of you better hope so too.

this is on the washington post's parent company from today

The company's newspaper division, which includes The Post and several smaller papers, lost $23.6 million in the quarter, bringing 2009 losses to $166.7 million, compared with losses of $178.3 million through the first nine months of 2008. Like most newspapers, The Post was hit hard by the recession, which further eroded advertising revenue, already in decline for years. ... Daily circulation at The Post is down 3.6 percent for the first nine months of the year, and now stands at 600,800. Sunday circulation was down 3.7 percent and is now 840,100.

Sure. Advertising is down everywhere. Ask your local TV and radio stations how they're doing.

The fact is, the majority of large, mid and small newspapers continue to operate at a profit margain that would make most businesses of their size weep with joy.

There are exceptions, of course.

Almost without exception the newspapers who have closed in the past 10 years were those in cities where there was another major competitor. Dual (or more) daily newspaper towns are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. There's just not enough advertising dollars to support them.

Newspapers are certainly having to rethink their economic models and can no longer expect to rake in profits in the 25-30% range they used to, but they're still very profitable and perhaps still the single-most most effective advertising medium.

Pay attention when to who you hear crying "newspapers are dead." Then think, would it benefit this person if that statement were true?

It's very similar to Dana White running around saying "Boxing is a dying sport" to anyone who will listen.

HBO Real Sports did an interesting piece about how newspapers are in more trouble than they ever have been. I don't know if you got a chance to see it. Very well done piece by esteemed journalist Frank Deford.

The news will always be here, I just don't think the newspaper will be. There will come a time when everything will be read off a digital reader that will have instant access to news. We have cell phones, laptops, blackberries, & etc these days that give us news. I hate to say it but newspapers waste trees. I'm not against journalism. I'm very much for it. But the most interesting thing about the HBO piece is that journalism is moving to the internet more and more due to the fact that there is less opportunities in print media. News will be here forever, because we need it. It's part of who we are. But a newspaper is only one facet of of how we get news and it would be stupid to think that people are going to always stand by papers when we have so many ways to receive news these days. Upcoming generations will look at newspapers as just some primitive way to get news.

I can hear it in a history class a hundred years from now, "Back in the early part of the 21st century people still read day old news from these papers that wasted trees. In it was news that was sometimes over a day old! Wow isn't it great children that we can read the news whenever we want now. In fact lets turn on our digital reader to see what interesting things happened in the world this morning. Isn't technology grand?"

Oh, I do agree that "newspapers" will eventually go purely digital. It's just not going to happen as soon as some seem to think. Many will continue to exist as news gathering organizations, especially on the local levels.

Like I told someone earlier, better enjoy reading that content for free while you can. That model is not sustainable.

It was actually me you told that too.

It will be very hard for premium news to be policed. The difference is that news in and of itself has always been free. Even if you never bought a newspaper or own a TV chances are there will be someone going "did you hear what happened last night down at the park?" We should all pay for a good yarn in an article though, but this is the internet, people will post news from other sources.

it can be policed a little. Here at Doghouse no one is allowed to paste premium articles from other boxing sites. People pay to read those and our website respects that. It's only right. But as long as there are bloggers and forums that do post people's premium articles, it's going to be very hard to police.

Even now people get away with watching PPV sports for free on the internet, how in the world is someone going to stop someone from posting a premium article somewhere?

That's good stuff.

Very good points. I think there will eventually be a way. It may seem impossible, but this whol internet deal probably seemed impossible to most people 30 years ago. You are very right in that the internet world is very much a wild west at the moment. That's part of the reason many sites struggle to pay the bills despite having exceptional, popular content.

BINGO..... The boxing world has really changed in just my lifetime, let alone since it's glory years. I'll bet it we went back to the 20's thru 40's New York Times archives we'd actually find some editions with FRONT PAGE boxing news, not to mention large articles in the sports section itself. Sheez, some of the bouts where they had up to 100,000 in Yankee stadium, or packed the old Garden arena.

When I first became interested in the sport it was broadcast live monday, wed and friday nights on network (ABC, CBS, NBC) television. Of course thats when they had the traditional 7 weight categories with ONE champion per division, elimination bouts were 12 rounds and championship matches went 15.

Over a period of time the alpha jerks started arriving on the scene and before long we had weight categories squeezed between the traditional ones and eventually 4 or 5 strap holders per division. The television audiences started to dwindle, sponsors started to dry up, stations started canceling boxing and today its down to cable and PPV events. The one time number one spectator sport in America is now waaaaaaaaaaay down the list somewhere below lady's volleyball which I imagine the NY Times covers extensively.

hmm.. well, i don't know enough to argue with you. when i hear newspapers brought up, it's almost always b/c they're going broke or someone's calling for them to be bailed out, and the stories about the new york times' loan give a person of my political persuasion a smile. like johnny said, i don't really know anyone under 50 who reads them outside of the WSJ in the office. good for them, though..

Are you insane? Tampa Florida with no Verizon Yellow Pages? You must be CRAZY. Don't comment on things you have no idea about. I don't find it hard to believe that you don't think the Yellow pages is used.. Especially the official book, Verizon. AC, Auto Repair, Plumbers.. Hundreds of more headings get thousands of purchases every month. They'd cease to exist without it.