(11-10-2019 06:55 AM)Muskrat Wrote: I've been looking at the sports pages since about 1953. Coverage of certain teams has increased over the years. The Browns get more ink after a preseason game now than they got after their 1964 title. Coverage of Ohio State football has really increased, even though they always got top college football coverage. The saturation coverage of certain teams comes at the expense of others. Coverage of mid-major sports in northeast and all of eastern Ohio has been the biggest loser.
You are exactly right, and it is extremely sad.
I was talking just yesterday about the teams that spanned the Gary Waters-Stan Heath-Jim Christian era from 1999-2003. During that time, Brian Windhorst covered KSU for the Akron Beacon Journal, Elton Alexander covered KSU and Akron (and really the entire MAC) for the Plain Dealer. The Record Courier had two reporters at every game with Allen Moff and me, and I was pulling double duty writing KSU stories for the Associated Press. Back then, KSU drew enough interest for the AP to use me as a stringer (nice, selfishly, because it more than doubled my pay on those days).
And that was just the professional journalists. The Daily Kent Stater had a long string of fantastic sports reporters covering KSU sports during that period and beyond. Many of them are still in the business. The Stater was a fantastic resource for KSU news.
Following the economic downturn in 2008, though, cutbacks at newspapers led to smaller sections and ongoing layoffs. The larger metropolitan newspapers weren't going to cut back on coverage of the primary professional and power 5 college teams. High school coverage is also a moneymaker. It was the beats like KSU's that were eliminated, while newspapers like the Record Courier, trying simply to survive, kept beat reporters on coverage of hometown teams like the Flashes, but stretched them thin with other duties. When I was on the Kent State beat, I attended just about every football and men's basketball practice, and tried to catch practices of other teams when I could. I wanted to be at those practices, but the newspaper also wanted me there to produce at least one story and notebook/sidebar per day. I know Allen would love nothing more than to be able to do that now, but it's just not possible these days with all of the other hats he has to wear.
The continuing decline in the newspaper business made it difficult to attract talented writers into KSU's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. With even the Stater cutting back on its days of publication and moving its focus online, coverage has declined to preview and game stories sprinkled with the occasional feature on a student-athlete with an intriguing story.
Even this message board has seen declining numbers in recent years, which could be due to the lack of coverage. Ironically, this is one of the best places to get news about Kent State sports as many of you keep an eye out for stories on recruits and other student-athletes in their local newspapers and report back on your experiences attending or watching games on tv and the internet, writing about how players and the team are developing during a season.
Since I left KSU and decided not to return for a game until there's a change in leadership (something difficult for me having started going to games at Dix and the MACC in the early 1970s with my dad), I've kept in touch with what is going on by reading this message board and by watching and listening to Ty, Rob and Jacob on the radio and/or watching the ESPN3/ESPN+ broadcasts.
At least we have those resources!