The Age-Old Argument

The age-old argument…print isn’t dead,but it’s seriously behind. 

So Tuesday night, Yahoo! Sports broke a big story in the world of college football.  An 11-month investigation found that a booster for University of Miami athletics, who also happens to be a convicted ponzi-schemer, says he dumped cash, gifts and favors on at least 72 athletes for approximately eight years. 

Here’s where I’m very interested about this—it was Yahoo! Sports that dug deep and busted this thing wide open. It wasn’t the Miami Herald or the Sun Sentinel…it was Yahoo! Sports. 

In just the world of college sports, Yahoo! Sports has busted at least four other similar stories wide open. The level of investigation, time and energy put into these stories is unreal. They broke the Reggie Bush fiasco back in 2006. Extreme details about a controversial fee for recruiting assistance at the University of Oregon came a few months back. Back in March when there were questions about the University of Connecticut basketball program and their recruiting tactics, Yahoo! Sports was there. And after the Ohio State football NCAA investigation that exposed several players of selling memorabilia, Yahoo! Sports was there to break the news to Buckeye fans that Jim Tressel knew about everything.  

And this is all just in the world of college athletics. Think about the other times the online world has beaten traditional media to the punch. When the US Airways plane crash landed in the Hudson River in Jan. 2009, Twitter was the first place that hundreds of thousands heard of the story. Video from the hailstorms and tornados in Westmoreland County hit YouTube before it hit KDKA, WTAE or WPXI, let alone any of the print formats. 

There are countless reports of newspapers across America struggling, downsizing staff, reducing their frequency, and that’s because they simply aren’t relevant. 

One important thing to note here…it’s not always about speed. Sure, breaking news in the traditional sense involved a live stand up on your local television news broadcast telling you about the latest tragedy or event, but as showcased beautifully in the Yahoo! Sports Miami investigation, speed isn’t important. 

What is important is giving the few reporters that newspaper have left the time and budget to focus on looking into these important stories. One potential reason for not allowing this to happen, aside from the budgetary issues and time constraints, could be relationships that journalists have with their sources. Maybe if the Miami-Herald football beat writer decided to take on this challenging investigation, they would be concerned about lack of cooperation from the athletic department in future locker room situations or pre-season insights, ultimately hurting the newspapers view in the eyes of the audience. 

Of course there’s the group of folks out there who don’t have a computer, or don’t have a smartphone or don’t want to access the news online—and that’s fine. But when you pick up the newspaper tomorrow and read about something that happened yesterday AND it was reported by a non-local reporter, don’t question why. Lord knows with initiatives like the one , providing internet access and lost-cost computers, there’s no excuse…except wanting to remain behind the times. 

Either way, lengthy, worthwhile investigative pieces still have a very important place in our everyday lives.  It’s just a matter of who’s going to do those and how they’re delivered.