The Best Surrogates
Writes Vic Zast, in praise of the noble turf scribe:
These writers have access and research capabilities that bloggers and fans don’t…. The NTWA member has been conscientious in serving the sport. It’s the turf writer that takes the lead position on most crucial issues and expresses the opinions of fans in his writing…. They are the best surrogates of the fans, if the fans themselves are not represented …
Funny Zast should post those words today. This morning, turf writer Steve Haskin’s inaugural 2009 Derby Trail column, on the subject of Sheikh Mohammed purchasing promising Kentucky Derby prospects Midshipman and Vineyard Haven, disappeared for several hours after it was initially posted on Blood-Horse, with the only trace of the original text this snippet on Google:
Briefly, the missing column looked like a repeat of a 2006 incident in which a Haskin article on Bernardini’s retirement was pulled, raising questions about whether Blood-Horse had acted in response to advertiser pressure, but according to regular commenter EJXD2, “a well-placed BH insider told me that it had been posted w/out being edited” (via tweet). And Indeed, the column reappeared online, with edits throughout, starting in the first line (the text preserved on Google above):
Everyone knows by now that Sheikh Mohammed wants to win the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I), as evidenced by the amounts of money he’s spending for ready-made Derby horses.
Notice the missing word? It’s one you often hear in reference to the marvelous sums the noted sportsman deploys to procure elite equine talent; it’s one you might expect a conscientious surrogate to use in a column full of observations and insights — not a piece of straight reportage — on the Sheikh’s renewed pursuit of his Dubai-to-Derby dream. And the questions suggested by that adjective — well, you might expect such a respected turf writer to take a lead position on the issues raised by the actions and plans of such a prominent owner and breeder, and you might expect that his editor and publisher would allow him to express that position.
What’s Lost
… when newspaper reporters on the racing beat are laid off or retired, then replaced by general sports writers, who might be fine journalists but have little understanding of the sport or the industry and its ongoing stories, is exemplified in this dull bit of LA Times reporting on SoCal synthetic surface tracks, which rehashes every point every racing fan or even vaguely interested reader has already come across elsewhere, padded out by press release quality quotes.
An Expansion
So often, when the subject of mainstream media and racing comes up, it’s because coverage is being cut at yet another newspaper. The Wall Street Journal is going in a different direction, at least for the Breeders’ Cup, reports AdAge:
The Wall Street Journal is developing a special ad section for the Breeders’ Cup this October, the paper’s first ad section about a sports property and the Cup’s first ad buy in the paper.
(The Breeders’ Cup has been advertising in the WSJ online.) It is an ad section; the focus is advertising the Breeders’ Cup and interested marketers, but expanded sports editorial gets a mention, so I think we can expect some actual Breeders’ Cup coverage alongside the display ads …
Upcoming
Along with Teresa Genaro of Brooklyn Backstretch, I’ve been invited to appear on Call to the Post with Seth Merrow of Equidaily on the Capital OTB channel at 9:45 a.m. Monday (the show is streamed live online; Albany-Saratoga region viewers can watch on cable channel 12) to talk about how the web has changed the relationship between racing and its fans. Should be a fun discussion …
And on Thursday, sometime during the 4:30-5:30 p.m. hour, Dana Byerly of Green but Game and I will be on the Sirius radio show At the Races with Steve Byk (archived for listening online) to talk about Self Appointed Fan Committee, which should also be an interesting conversation, as the committee’s first reports will be issued the same day.
LAT Turf Writers Out
Tell Zell’s list of Los Angeles Times journalists cut loose by the paper’s most recent round of buyouts and layoffs on Monday includes veteran turf writers Bob Mieszerski and Larry Stewart, and it looks as though the Times didn’t bother to have another sports writer in place to pick up the Del Mar beat — there’s nary an article about the meet’s opening in the paper today, a lack that does not bode well for future Southern California racing or Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita print coverage this fall …
Which reminds me of a point made by Maryjean Wall, retired from her turf writing gig at the Lexington Herald-Leader this spring, in a recent Blood-Horse chat:
[I]t’s no secret that the numbers among print media are declining. I would look around in any press box and wonder, who will be here to join us or take our places some day? … Blogging appears to be the wave of the future; when the future arrives, blogging might be horse racing’s only remaining media outlet.
I don’t know that blogs will end up the only remaining media outlet for racing, but online publishing is clearly the future, and it can be a very good future for turf journalism, which is just the sort of niche that can thrive on the web. It’s a shame that reporters such as Mieszerski and Stewart are being cut from newsrooms, but such unfortunate losses don’t have to mean the sport or its coverage is disappearing.
7/17 Addition: Bob Ike gets a call from Bob Mieszerski,
telling me that he had been laid off as part of the L A Times cost-cutting measures. The Times cut 150 jobs, and Mieszerski and racing writer Larry Stewart were two of the victims. Mieszerski is an extremely talented handicapper and writer who has been in the newspaper business since he was 21 years old. Blessed with an incredible memory and great feel for the game, I consider him one of my main handicapping mentors…. Mieszerski deserved better — being notified two days before the start of Del Mar showed a complete lack of class by the Times, which will now have no horse racing coverage in the country’s second-largest market. With the Breeders’ Cup coming to Santa Anita this fall, could the timing have been any worse?
No, not really, and the LAT sports editor’s claim that the paper will provide “robust coverage of the Breeders’ Cup this fall at Santa Anita,” doesn’t provide much solace.
On the Eve of an Anniversary
It was four years ago this month (June 17 to be exact) that Railbird began. As hard as it might be to believe now, when there are more than 35 members of the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance and dozens of blogs published independently or by the NTRA, Blood-Horse, and DRF, the racing blogosphere was a barren place those days. There was Equidaily, and Oregon Racing News, and trainer Tim Woolley’s infrequently updated original site. It would be five more months before Handride emerged, six months until Left at the Gate, and almost a year to the blog explosion.
I was then midway through a political science degree, undertaken after a stint living abroad and with vague intentions of tweaking my career, which had drifted from newspaper reporting into academic and literary publishing. I had, unexpectedly, gone crazy for racing the summer before, after a long-dormant interest in the sport was revived on a slow, muggy Saturday afternoon at Suffolk Downs, and all I wanted to do was handicap and go to the racetrack. My studies in the exciting field of post-Soviet East European civil society suffered, although I did find uses for the quantitative analysis and statistics work I had slogged through first semester.
Railbird arose from a simple motivation: I set out to create the racing blog I wanted to visit, a site that would point to the important news of the day and the most interesting commentary, and link to surprising and out of the way bits on the web, which is pretty much what the site tried to be through 2004, 2005, and 2006 (thanks to the Wayback Machine for those flashbacks); 2007 brought small changes. I guess a few of you were looking for the same thing, because the response was amazing — traffic was terrific out of the gate and grew phenomenally through June 2006, when I started an interesting interlude at the Daily Racing Form and briefly lost time for posting, and resumed growing when I returned to blogging a few months later and realized how much I’d missed being part of the conversation while I was away. To say that maintaining Railbird has been one of more professionally and personally rewarding experiences I’ve had is an understatement, and I’m grateful for the many wonderful friendships and opportunities that have come about because of this small site, and for the chance to take part in the growth of the smart and passionate community devoted to this most magnificent sport.
I’m at work on something new now, a web site about which I am very excited (more on that in coming weeks), but Railbird, I hope, will go on for another four years. It’s been a lot of fun since that first post, and I credit every reader, friend, and fellow blogger for making that so. Thank you.
Tipping Point
I’ve been thinking about racing media lately — about Maryjean Wall’s retirement, a certain track publicist’s old media conception of “significant coverage,” John’s keen observation that blogs had the edge over mainstream media when it came to Derby coverage, the apparent success of The Rail — and it occurs to me that this is the year turf coverage tips from print to web, when much of the best reporting, commentary, and analysis appears online first, if not exclusively. Of course, I’m biased, given all the time I’ve been devoting to a little project nearing launch, but I believe we’re on the verge of a revived and vibrant racing media scene, thanks to the web …
Blood-Horse Goes Digital
Last month, I wrote about waffling over renewing my Blood-Horse subscription. Too much print, I complained, and wished for an online-only version of the magazine. A few days later, a nice note from Blood-Horse circulation director Marla B. appeared in my inbox. They were working on just such a product, she wrote, and offered access to the beta, which is how I’ve been happily reading the magazine since. The screenshot above gives a sense of what Blood-Horse digital looks like: Basically, the complete contents of the print magazine are loaded into a cool browser-based reader, allowing the viewer to flip through pages, search for text, search archived issues, click on links within articles and ads, and so on. It’s a merger of print and web publishing that works surprisingly well.
Marla emailed last week that the digital edition is launching soon with a special introductory price of $39 for a year (which Railbird readers can get by calling 800-582-5604 and saying they saw it on this site). Blood-Horse readers with an existing subscription can convert to the digital edition with any unused print subscription time applied to the digital.
In case you’re wondering: No, I’m not getting a cut of each subscription or any other payment. This little commercial announcement comes about because I’m a pleased reader who really likes what Blood-Horse is doing online, and this is how I’ll be renewing my subscription …
FSIM Opens Next Friday
Filmmaker Brad Hennegan and the man* who bought the first tickets in New York to the Friday night opening of FSIM.
Don’t forget! “The First Saturday in May,” the feel-good documentary by the Hennegan Brothers that follows six 2006 Kentucky Derby prospects, including Barbaro and Lawyer Ron, from preps to post, opens in theaters across the country beginning April 18. Find a theater near you.
Thumbs up! Both Dana and Teresa have all the details on the New York screening and reviews of the movie. Since I’m an inept critic, I’ll throw you over to Green But Game and Brooklyn Backstretch for much more on this delightful film …
Keeneland Classic Channel
Great idea, oddly executed. “Tune in”? Not online.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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