JC / Railbird

Newspapers

Finding a Way

From Jay Bergman’s remembrance of Sports Eye founder Jack Cohen:

What was so impressive about Mr. Cohen to me was his ability to get around obstacles in his way. At the forefront of his effort to put out past performances in Sports Eye, his publication that had only given entries, results and selections, was an obstacle called the track program. The program printed for the tracks at Roosevelt and Yonkers was a product of Doc Robbins. That product was a monopoly of sorts and Mr. Cohen had to figure out how to get access to information in advance of race day in order to provide “his version” of past performances in a timely fashion. Ultimately what he did was pay off Robbins’ employees to provide him a minimal amount of information that would allow for his staff to connect-the-dots and provide a competitive product.

I love these stories of people hustling to get around data monopolies, even if they’re all from decades ago, and racing data is now stagnant.

Posted in Racing on May 14, 2017 / Tagged Daily Racing Form, Data, Media, Newspapers, Past Performances, Sports Eye

More Media

John Pricci on the racing media:

Without objective coverage, what passes for reportage these days often is rewritten press releases, that is when industry media bother to make the effort at all.

Internet news disseminators have joined this bandwagon, learning to follow the money—their own—and tend not to trumpet any commentary that could be construed as controversial, thus becoming part of a problematic trend.

Sure, I smirked a little reading that. And then I sighed, because it’s a simplistic critique. There’s a bit too much romanticizing about the Great Newspaper Turf Journalists of Yore these days by those who look across the press box and see only decline in the presence of the digital-first breed now filling the seats.

Oh, that’s a gross generalization, you say? You bet.

When I started following racing a decade ago, both of Boston’s daily newspapers had a turf writer. Most newspapers of any size in a market with a racetrack had a turf reporter. There’s no denying that layoffs and buyouts and retirements and the swift shift to digital media has made the newspaper turf writer an endangered species and left significant gaps in coverage. Everyone who thinks about the subject should feel a little alarm at the thought that Tom Noonan and Alan Mann — both expert as they are in the areas they blog about regularly — are pretty much it for purveyors of ongoing, critical, non-trade press coverage of NYRA. (Noonan even files FOIA requests.)

But a lot of the coverage 10 years ago was rewritten press releases, and bland race previews and recaps that all used the same quotes from the same NTRA teleconferences and track stable notes. It was much of that “reporting” that’s been squeezed out, and it’s hard to call the development bad. Consider the New York Post writers laid off on the eve of the 2013 Belmont Stakes, who Pricci casts in heroic pose as “trying to broker negotiations between NYRA and Post executives, the goal being to recover advertising that was pulled following the critical story.” Admirable. Yet Ed Fountaine had checked out years ago — he was burned out, something even he acknowledged:

Fountaine … said he was relieved to be let go, citing the daily grind of the job. “I’ve got a screenplay I’ve been wanting to finish, and a couple of books I want to write, projects I couldn’t do because of my job,” he said. “Now I have the time. I’m not doing handstands, but I’m close.”

If there’s a bright side to the losses, it’s that stories deserving more depth and reportage are getting attention, because that’s the kind of coverage that offers enough value to cover its costs and has the potential to cross over (disagree or not with how Joe Drape reports on racing for the New York Times — his work has highlighted real issues within the industry, engages more casual observers, and is pushing reforms). “My reality says racing journalism has gotten better,” tweeted Blood-Horse writer Tom LaMarra. “It covers things esteemed writers of the past wouldn’t touch.” Team Valor is rewarding investigative reporting with a $25,000 annual award (PDF). The Thoroughbred Daily News has used its platform to publish work such as a six-part series on drugs in racing, and given space for debate on stories such as the PETA investigation of Steve Asmussen’s barn. There’s also more room for, and possibilities for the inventive telling of, the kind of soft stories that broadly appeal — think the Blood-Horse longform features, or the New York Times’ “Snow Fall”-like profile of jockey Russell Baze.

What’s in danger of being completely lost is independent, daily coverage that encompasses management issues and handle numbers as much as racing results. Work that’s important for transparency and accountability, but isn’t splashy. I’m not sure what the solution is — turf media support, in the form of advertising, primarily comes from the breeding or wagering segments of the industry, and so that’s where most coverage concentrates, and even though an organization like NYRA is state-regulated, state-managed, and operates on state-owned lands, assigning a beat reporter to it is obviously a hard sell to mainstream news executives who see it, if they see it at all, as a niche within bigger beats such as state government, or sports. This is a problem.

Posted in Racing on July 29, 2014 / Tagged Beat Reporting, Journalism, Media, Newspapers, Turf Writers

Notes for 2009-03-12

– New York Times turf writer Joe Drape (@joedrape) has joined the mindcasting masses on Twitter, and although it appears he’s still settling into the amorphous medium, his feed has the potential to become an interesting glimpse into how one reporter covers his beat. Drape’s already proven capable of engaging his followers and sparking micro-debates — not a bad start.

– Seattle Post-Intelligencer publisher Roger Oglesby said on Wednesday that Hearst would announce its plans for the newspaper, which has been up for sale and is expected to shut down all operations but its online presence, sometime next week. All 170 employees of the paper have been notified that their jobs will end between March 18 and April 1, including veteran turf writer Larry Lee Palmer, who filed his last column on Monday. Bizarre and despicable, writes Marks Potts of the vague situation.

– Post Parade broke the news earlier this week that turf writer Gary West has been laid off. 3/13/09 Update: West remains employed. “Apparently we still live in the age of miracles,” said the Star-Telegram writer. Guess that means Post Parade won’t become Texas racing’s publication of record on March 21.

– Another Twitter mention, this time for NYRA, which is doing a bang-up job sending out scratches, links and photos, updates on inquiries and spills, etc. through its @NYRAcomm and @NYRAnews feeds. What is the funny little service good for? Anything that can be delivered in 140 characters — Twitter is broadcast, micro-blogging, chat, live search. More tracks would do well to follow NYRA’s lead. (That may be first time I’ve said such a thing — go NYRA.)

– I’m looking for a web developer with strong programming and database skills, experienced in building web applications, to work with on a project. Racing knowledge would be nice, but isn’t required. Please email for details.

Posted in Media on March 12, 2009 / Tagged Newspapers, Social Media, Turf Writers, Twitter, Web Development