JC / Railbird

Seems to me, and I am utterly clueless when it comes to this, that these cutbacks and layoffs could prove to be the best thing to happen to horse racing.
Like you said, online media is good place for horse racing news and if some of these, or all, laid off journalists got together and started a horse racing network, something to really compete with the sad networks we have now (TVG, HRTV, ESPN), then it could broaden the appeal and reach of our sport.
Put smart people, knowledgeable people in charge of the thing and it WILL work.

Posted by winston on July 16, 2008 @ 10:27 am

People interested in horse racing will seek it out on the Internet; newspapers — theoretically — bring it, however, to a wider audience. The newspaper industry clearly is willing and able to commit suicide by — at paper after paper — making radical changes that are not in its best long-term interest. They will be neither able to keep their disenchanted loyal readers or have anything worthwhile to offer new ones. The move to graphics and fluff — disguised as local news — is laughable. How is a newspaper going to beat the Internet for graphic presentation? Newspaper readers want serious, comprehensive news. They want penetrating reporting, depth and nuance. They want discovery. People turn to the Internet to read about what they already know they want to read about. On the Internet, you don’t read a story about Bush, then a local zoning fight, then a murder, then an editorial about a critical vote in Congress, then a movie review, then the comics, then a story about the economy, then a horse racing story. That’s what a newspaper does well — it makes you a well-rounded human being. It enlightens you about what your government is doing. It teaches and informs you as you turn the page. The industry is going after people now who don’t want to read a serious newspaper. It is digging its own grave. — John S.

Posted by John S. on July 16, 2008 @ 6:45 pm

I’ve never even picked up the LAT, but I don’t imagine that they have dearth of public handicapping selections as the NY papers do. At tracks in this area, you can see as many people walking around with cut out pages from the NY Post as you will see with the DRF. In this way, the newspaper destroys the internet by giving the public an ‘all-in-one’ piece of paper it can do something with.

Posted by o_crunk on July 17, 2008 @ 9:40 am

Cost cutting or throat cutting?

Posted by libby on July 17, 2008 @ 10:53 am

Winston, I agree the cuts could have a positive effect, if new outlets are spurred into being …
John, Eric Alterman has a column that applies:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080804/alterman
Newspapers are important, but execs have to get beyond thinking of their product as primarily print, as a physical object. What they offer of value is serious, wide-ranging, nuanced journalism, and print is just one format option. Fluff is commodity and dedicating ever-dwindling resources to hyper-local news and soft features is suicide. And I don’t think a reader needs a print newspaper to be a well-rounded citizen — a good web site that allows for serendipitous browsing accomplishes the same. The NYT does a decent job of translating the print reading experience online while taking advantage of the web’s expansiveness.
O_crunk, that’s a good point, and one that didn’t occur to me since I pretty much gave up print news (although, not books or magazines) a while ago. For a lot of people, though, that all-in-one page is the killer app.
Ultimately the latter, libby.

Posted by Jessica on July 17, 2008 @ 3:21 pm