Dude, Where's My Box Scores?

What's Mother's Day without Mom?  What's the Fourth of July without lemonade?  What's America without Apple Pie? Unthinkable, that's what they are.   What's a Newspaper without Baseball Box Scores?  Same answer. 

I was at a breakfast meeting this morning and a friend came up to me with an ashen look on his face and said:  "The Tribune quit printing the box scores...that's the only reason that I still subscribe."

Newspapers are in a tough spot.  It's surprising how many people who are otherwise indifferent to their local newspaper, continue to subscribe because there's one little thing that they don't want to miss.  My dad subscribes to the Tucson Citizen for the golf coupons.  My wife sends me out to buy the Republic so that she doesn't miss a Dillard's sale.  Naturally newspapers aren't going to eliminate the golf coupons or the Dillard's ads...those things generate revenue. 

However, the movie listings, stock quotes and yes, the box scores all take up valuable newsprint but they don't generate revenue.  Newspapers gradually eliminate these features and with each elimination, they give readers one more reason not to renew their subscriptions. 

It's a downward spiral.  A declining subscription base forces papers to cut costs and many of those cost-cutting measures lead to cancelled descriptions. 

Pretty soon the newspapers will be narrowly tailored for a specific constitutency.  You know, like a blog. 

Comments

[ron]

I sign up for box scores - get them in my emails from MBL. who needs the paper??? except to line the birdcage.

I do actually still get it because sometimes AR still publishes stuff in print that is not online.

ron

[james]

Greg, you've struck a nerve. Out here in So Cal, that great dinosaur, the LATimes, has dropped coverage of vertually all high school sports. To get box scores/ etc.,I've got to hit the internet---Oh well...
Jim.

[Jack]

Employees are expensive too. Bordow's blog today says the Trib had layoffs last week. No other details...

http://bordowssportsblog.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/13/asu-cuts-three-sports/

[Special Agent Johnny Utah]

Is your friend familiar with the internet?