State’s sports covered
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/224917/
Here’s a complaint as old as the
hills: The newspaper covers too
much sports emanating from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and doesn’t give enough coverage to the sports teams of the rest of the state’s colleges and universities. How old are those hills ? They go back at least as far as 1974, when a certain green college kid walked into this building as a sports clerk working high school football on Friday nights. Surely the complaints go back even farther, to the dawn of the modern sports era in Arkansas. Orville Henry and Jack Keady, grizzled old sports editors of the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat, probably got an earful on a regular basis.
Especially from Arkansas State University fans and alums.
A letter the other day wound up on my desk.
“All I see are articles about Razorback recruiting, Razorback track, Razorback practice sessions,” it said. “Enough already ! How about some coverage of other Arkansas teams !”
Easy, big fella. Step away from the keyboard and we’ll talk about this.
First, let’s skewer the idea that this newspaper doesn’t do much coverage of ASU and all its teams. Our sportswriter Todd Traub would beg to differ. He’s been our ASU beat reporter for the past few years, and a fine one at that. Todd might take umbrage at the idea we don’t cover ASU sports because he goes to Jonesboro for every home football and basketball game. And if he doesn’t, someone else on the staff takes his place.
Game coverage is in addition to all the other coverage of ASU’s main sports that Todd provides. It’s typical for him to write an advance on each of these games, the game story and then a follow-up.
One of our librarians, at my request, dug into the electronic archives to find out how many ASU sports stories Todd had written in 2007. There were 168 of them. He’s already written about 50 ASU sports stories this year. He must be tired.
Granted, we wrote many more about Razorback sports, but 168 separate bylined news stories isn’t actually ignoring the sports news of Northeast Arkansas.
In addition to ASU, we assign a staff reporter to the University of Central Arkansas at Conway and to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Those are the other Division I NCAA schools in the state. Another is assigned to the smaller colleges and universities, and another to high school basketball, and high school football, and high school spring sports such as soccer and track. And then there’s Oaklawn. And then amateur golf in the state and—well, you get the picture. Did I mention that we staff every home game of the Arkansas Travelers with a sportswriter and a photographer ? Hey, dude, how about those Arkansas Twisters ? Point made, I hope. To beat the point to death, there has been a spectacular growth in sports of all kinds, professional and amateur. The fans of each want what they consider to be their fair share of coverage. Our job is to cover these sports with an eye to newsworthiness. That means what most readers care about the most. And in Arkansas that means Razorback sports of all kinds.
UA sports is big time, especially football and basketball. The track team has been consistently the best in the country for literally decades. The baseball team has had plenty of success over the years. More fans in Arkansas feel more passionately about UA sports than anything else. That’s simply reality, and our coverage reflects that reality. To get a better sense of the issues, I asked of both UA-Fayetteville and ASU: How many alums live in Arkansas ? UA, 57, 445; ASU, 37, 286.
How many alums live in Pulaski County, where this newspaper has its greatest circulation ? UA, 11, 285; ASU, 3, 357. What’s the capacity of the football stadiums ? UA seats 72, 000 in Fayetteville and 53, 727 in War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. ASU seats roughly 30, 000 in its football stadium.
What was average football attendance last year ? UA had an average of 66, 032. ASU had an average of—well, I don’t know. We called the sports information office and left a message, but they never called back by my deadline. I’m guessing it’s not 66, 032. News flash: Todd Traub knows. He says it was 17, 040. Respectable, but not more than 66, 032. Footnote: About 40, 000 fans showed up for the recent UA spring football game. Full disclosure: I have friends at ASU and am privileged to be on an advisory committee to the journalism program. The students are excellent, and isn’t that what really matters ?
—–––––•–––––—Frank Fellone is the Democrat-Gazette’s deputy editor.