The State of Sports In The Newspaper Business

It is becoming a common occurrence. Newspaper writer lashes out at other sources of media in response to his own dying medium. There are sports journalists from the old school that refuse to hold new forms of media on the same ground. They believe they hold a greater position in sports than any of their contemporaries. What they fail to realize or accept is that in this day and age, everyone who cares to know has the access to game scores, stats, and breaking news that they thought only they were privileged to attain. Their "inside the locker room" analysis can now be trumped by more truthful banter from a player or coach's twitter account.

When I thought about this situation one metaphor came into my head, the Rite of Spring from Fantasia. Granted I did not know the name was Rite of Spring or that Igor Stravinsky was the composer, but I remember the piece from Fantasia. The parallel I draw is to the last movement of the piece, where the Earth has changed and the dinosaurs are slowly going extinct. They struggling to find nourishment, get stuck in tar pits, and eventually collapse onto the sand as the hot sun beats down on them. The last we see of these beings who once ruled the world are them marching in procession into a distant and cold future. Once they are gone only the memory of their bones remain as the world begins to change ever more violently and becomes more cold and remote.

The same way that these old writers have been left with a dwindling sports section, stuck in the tar pits of newspapers refusing to recognize the relevance of online reporting and blogs(even if they write online). Their only refuge is to lash out harshly against this new world in which they cannot survive and deem it a turn for the worse when in reality it is simply the way of the world, the flow of time that has ended their era.