Remember this remarkable WaPost sports section front from December 15, 2006? We told our readers that day to go out and purchase the Post as a way of acknowledging the paper’s spasm of balanced sports coverage.
Next question for you: Have you seen its likeness in the paper since? Me neither. The Caps in mid-December were the talk of the early NHL season, playing above-.500 hockey and fueling flights of playoff fancy among the city’s hockey fans. I had my doubts about claims (mostly of the message board variety) of a general improvement at WaPost in its coverage of hockey, and this morning I’m reporting no progress there. When it comes to covering hockey, this season the Post has proven once again that it’ll only back a front-runner.
For one day.
We hockey fans in this town this season have been thrown a few online chat and blog bones by the paper’s .com edition. Hard copy requires hard decisions of inclusion and exclusion, but just about anyone with something to say and a half hour’s time can, with a techie nearby, host a chat.
The principal WaPost product still stinks. And it’s not Tarik’s fault. Much higher up, there’s still entrenched editorial bigotry against the sport and the Caps.
And only winning will produce more false faces to mask it.
4 Comments
It’s all about column inches in hard print media, and the Caps aren’t perceived as rating that kind of attention. Always it has been, always it shall be thus (unless there is a long playoff run somewhere in the future). The Caps would need to sustain a level of success over years (Dallas would seem to be the model here) to dent the Redskin dominance of the Post’s sports coverage (not to mention Wizards, United, Nationals, ACC basketball, the Hoyas, the Orioles . . . and on , and on)
Now this is ***Breaking News*** and the kind of deep analysis that the MSM used to provide.
Just like the number of fans in the seats, the only way to increase the coverage is to win. Even without winning consistently, the Post and other outlets would probably be willing to cover in greater volume the rebuilding effort if there was a history of success from which to draw, and the franchise has precious little of that.
As for the frustration that local sports fans and media aren’t as excited as they should be about our star Alexes (and this is perhaps a topic for another discussion) - their talent is certainly worth seeing and reading about etc, but watching the team (and it is a TEAM game of course) go down to defeat most nights while an individual or two makes a jaw-dropping play isn’t enough for the casual fan, and apparently isn’t enough for the Post, et al either.
It annoys me how out-of-town media, particularly, point to the lack of attendance to see #8 as evidence that DC is not a hockey town. Oh I’ll still pay to attend when I can (because I’m a die-hard fan), but that doesn’t mean I’m satisfied if Ovie scores 5 times with the sickest of sick moves and we lose 6-5. For my part, I’d rather see a “boring” team of muckers and grinders go deep into the playoffs than a team with one or two stars who can’t be seen past early April because the team doesn’t make the playoffs.
I’m willing to wait for the coverage when it comes with the winning. For now, I’m more than happy with fora like this to keep me in the Caps loop.
Not a hockey post, but this is the reason why I cringe at the Post:
http://dcbb.blogspot.com/2007/03/boz-loves-waffle-house.html
I hope you all spend the time to read the short blog entry (not mine). It’s infuriating as an intelligent reader.
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