We're offering a 2-week trial of WrapPRO for $1. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Greetings! It's been a tough run for newspapers large and small, with devastating layoffs too common an occurrence. In recent years, sports desks around the country have faced the axe, with the NewYork Times disbanding its sports department and offloading its coverage responsibilities to its The Athletic division in 2023. The Los Angeles Times stopped printing baseball box scores in 2023, and is reportedly down to just nine full-time sports staff writers. Earlier this month, the Washington Post shuttered its sports section as part of mass newsroom layoffs. That's why it was a good time for our Corbin Bolies to take stock of the state of sports journalism. While sports entertainment has grown into a $29 billion juggernaut, with major leagues commanding lofty premium for broadcast rights, the intense interest has ironically hurt the efforts by legacy outlets to cover this beat, as sports junkies are spoiled for choice. Fans can now get their updates from TikTok, ESPN or the teams and players who are keen to own the narrative themselves. Meanwhile, local newspapers with less output and resources keep getting pushed further down the search results thanks to Google's algorithms. Sports coverage isn't dead, but evolving, as Bolies writes. In its place are sports-centric outlets like Athletic, whose editors stress the need to be flexible on how to tell a format, leaning on stories, podcasts, video and other formats when appropriate. Or there are independent journalists such as Pablo Torre, a former Sports Illustrated writer and ESPN personality who now has the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” to help fill the gap. He broke one of the biggest sports stories last year with his bombshell report on the Los Angeles Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer allegedly getting around the NBA salary cap to pay star Kawhi Leonard through a now-bankrupt company. It’s happening at a time when there’s no shortage of local sports news. Los Angeles is dealing with the downfall of Casey Wasserman and his departure from one of the largest sports agencies in the world, not to mention the ongoing controversy over his role as chairman of the LA28 Olympics committee. The FIFA World Cup kicks off in June, and the Super Bowl returns to SoFi Stadium a year from now. And I'd like to know: Is LeBron James sticking around with the Lakers? Roger Cheng 
The decimation of sports news desks throughout the country isn't just a blow to fans hungry for local coverage, it also diminishes the pipeline of journalism talent... 
| ||||||||||||
