Thursday, April 13, 2006

The Gray Lady and the Red Sox

Okay, I'll preface this by admitting again I'm a Yankee fan. I grew up a Yankee fan in Northeastern Pennsylvania and have remained one despite being in Boston for over 30 years. (By my way of thinking, team loyalty ought to be set by puberty. If you grew up a Sox fan in Newton, went to college at NYU and ended up living and working on Long Island, would you be a Yankee fan today? I hope not.)

Anyway, with all the questions raised about a conflict at the Boston Globe because its corporate parent, The New York Times Co., has a 17 percent interest in the Red Sox, I think people are barking up the wrong tree. Maybe those questions should be asked of the New York Times, a newspaper that sure seems to shower the out-of-town Red Sox with considerably more affection than the men in pinstripes.

Back in January, New York magazine calculated that in the 2005-2006 offseason, the Times actually devoted more stories to the Sox than it did to either the hometown Yanks or Mets. Here's an excerpt:

What’s going on? Too many Harvard grads on 43rd Street? Or can the paper be reminding New Yorkers that it owns a minority stake in the Sox? Nothing of the sort, insists sports editor Tom Jolly, who says the count is skewed because of the movement of Red Sox free agents and the upheaval in their front office. “Anything [the Red Sox] do will be of great interest to Yankee fans.” Still, a search reveals that no other local paper comes close to this kind of parity.

Now take Exhibit B, the Great Gray Lady's coverage of the Red Sox and Yankees respective home openers on Tuesday. Guess what led the sports section? A big story about new Boston pitcher Josh Beckett featuring a huge photo of the pumped-and-jacked Sox hurler. Closer to home, Derek Jeter's 8th inning homer that led the Yanks to a dramatic come from behind win over Kansas City was relegated to the bottom of the page in a Harvey Araton piece that treated the exciting win like a Pyrrhic victory -- at best. Here's a killjoy sentence.

"this sellout-crowd-pleasing victory should come wrapped with a label that reads: Buyer Beware. Because the World Series winner is seldom a team that looks as unacquainted with crisp, mistake-free-baseball as the 21st-century Yankees have increasingly become."

Ah, nothing like having the team's post-season hopes dashed seven games into the new season. After a win!!!

But it gets worse for the Yankees when Murray Chass feels the need to celebrate the Yanks home opener with a column moaning because owner George Steinbrenner won't give him an interview. That didn't stop Chass, however, from:

1) digging up controversial Steinbrenner quotes that are nearly 30 years old.
2) suggesting that at age 75, Steinbrenner is impaired in some way that he doesn't specify.
3) making it seem like there was something sinister and suspicious about the few words Steinbrenner did utter to reporters that day. Like saying he was "very pleased" with the game's outcome, that Jeter is a "super" player, and declaring that "every team [the Yankees play] is going to be tough." Wow, what inflammatory pronouncements. Call the commissioner's office.

Happy opening day, Yanks. (Just imagine if yesterday's Globe sports section had led with a big feature on "Captain Clutch" Derek Jeter, had complained that the Sox 5-3 win over Toronto exposed weaknesses that could doom the team's post-season prospects, and finished up with a Shaughnessy column mocking John Henry as an uncommunicative weirdo.)

I guess the Times thinks of itself as a national paper. But maybe that 17 percent piece of the action really has turned it into part of Red Sox Nation.

4/13/2006 11:17:18 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [14] |
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Thursday, April 13, 2006 12:07:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Perhaps it is the wall street harvard mba types that are really driving up the price and generally making tickets tough to come by. Is this the real market ie. most lucrative market, that the sox are really chasing? It is nothing to spend a hundreds of thousands of dollars for clients who earn u tens of millions in financial fees. Wall street rules.

Like all parties, this red sox revenue growth party will end and John Henry will still have to make that $700 million nut. Plus the extra million Tom Reilly demanded, which turned into the red sox foundation.

Ernie Boch III

Thursday, April 13, 2006 1:42:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

(wow, look at that, following in the steps of THE Ernie Boch??? Hmmm 'Real or Not Real'...-that could be a TV show too)

Anyway...

My NYT question of the day is:

How long before the NYT backtracks from this WALL idea and tries to grow revenues up again?? How much time before they announce the wall is coming down??

This wire story shows the first signs of fissures in the wall:

"Reuters
Earnings fall at three major newspaper publishers
Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:35 PM ET

.....

New York Times Co., publisher of the Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune and its namesake newspaper, said net earnings fell to $35 million, or 24 cents a share, from $111 million, or 76 cents a share, a year earlier.

The latest results include a charge of $9.4 million for job cuts announced in September. In the year-earlier period, the company took a gain of $67.8 million for the sale of its headquarters and property in Florida.

Costs increased 6 percent in the quarter. Besides the work force reductions, New York Times Co. has announced various cost-saving measures, such as cutting back on stock tables in its flagship New York Times

..."

Even if you take out the 67Mil sale from last year, there is still a huge dropoff, beyond cost-cutting wirteo-ffs. Stories say they had a 9.8% increase in About.com growth but nothing about changes or percentages in the print or online core NYT ad sales. Not a good sign.

There was an interesting media exchange on C-Span down in Texas Christian University headed by Bob Schieffer with a couple of good panelists, Len Downie and Jill Abrahamson and Larry Kramer from CBS digital. Larry said something interesting: Last year in the NCAA run-up, they had a subscription rate of about $19-29(?) to access all the playoff college basketball games online and they had about 29,000 paid subscrpibers.
This year, they opened it free with advertiser backing and they had 15 Million downloads and "made millions from it."

This is in esence what was said on these boards when the wall went up and for the life of me, I can't believe they can't see this, the smart suits that they are. How could you miss this obvious alternative and remain so dogged in your pride and stuubornness, I ask Pinch?

Anyway...

Two questions for you mark:

1- Did the Phoenix drop the Adult section advertising? I picked up again a copy in a lomg while and there was no 'insert' there. Can you confirm this or is it put in some geographical points of distribution?

It sounds like a smart decision, opening up to advertising potential that refused the Phoenix 'indecent' association before. Or is it Mindich getting a bit older and losing his 'edge' shall we say??? Or is it Junior at work??

I don't expect the Phoenix to volunteer such 'news' on their pages or even on your blog, but I'm curious to get a confirmation. (it would be interesting what size of the pie did that mean to the Phoenix...less than 5%....3%..I am not holding my breath for THAT detail)

Since the Howard Stern FNX drop-off, I would have expected to see MORE strippers, not less. Poor FNX sales people these days the next arbitron would be painful. I Hope they recover somehow.

Actually, now that The Sox are under new , freiendlier ownership and the station is right next door, why wouldn't the Sox pick FNX as a broadcast partner? That would make sense, strong FM signal and all???? It would definitely make them forget Howard real quick...Just a thought...

2- One subject that keeps popping up is NBC's gotcha Journalism these days. They are becoming the story with their zealous investigative style:

What's up with that ludicrous Muslim bait during Nascar? That was very inappropriate and dumb and inflamatory to say the least.
Or the Child predator series. I am glad of the results and catching these criminals and idiots, but why would NBC be the front of the action?? Why would they have an NBC employee BAIT someone into commiting a crime??? I thouhgt that not even law and order can do that. At the least, shouldn't they partner with some advocacy parents group or something to have them trap predators while NBC is only filming/following the story and staying in the background??

Why are they crossing these lines all of a sudden?? This is akin to having embedded journalists making battlefield decisions or drawing up war plans as opposed to 'witnessing.'

I haven't seen you nor Dan nor Beat the Press say anything anout this, so I was curious why.

Thursday, April 13, 2006 3:31:55 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

I wonder if you have compared the editions of the NYT that are sold in New England with those sold in NYC? I suspect that just like the TV listings and weather are geared to the NE market in the NE edition it's possible that the sports are also slanted that way.

Paul@01852

Thursday, April 13, 2006 3:34:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Mark:

Time and again you pray for pity with the Yankee lament. We forgave you before and may do so again, but it is becoming tiresome.

However, in the spirit of Easter, here's hoping your cross is made easier to bear.

Wes

Thursday, April 13, 2006 3:57:11 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Wes, no Yankee fan worth his stripes asks for pity from Red Sox Nation. Why should or would we? I just think the Times should come out and admit its true colors -- Red.

Mark Jurkowitz

Thursday, April 13, 2006 4:18:38 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

The Yankees are, like, sooo last millennium!

Ugh!

Specks

Thursday, April 13, 2006 10:14:04 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Is it possible Mark that you are unfamiliar with the N.E. edition versus the City-Region edition of the NYTimes? Did you read the N.E. edition without knowing it? It's hard to credit you as a serious media columnist if you made such an obvious blunder.

Friday, April 14, 2006 7:04:17 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

A nutmegger and a Yankee fan grinding an axe against the folk who made him redundant! Good Grief!

Pogo

Friday, April 14, 2006 7:40:49 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

The sox euphoria is at its peak. Before the decade is over we will begin to see the fans and new england begin to tire of this phony self-congratulatory and self serving hype being forced down our throats by Larry Luchino and the Wall Street/NY/Harvard/MBA types. They are not one of us, they are rather exploiters of us.

And Mark is right. No self respecting Yankee fan gives a rat's ass about the sox.
We are soooooo lame.

Ernie Boch III

Friday, April 14, 2006 8:21:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

To K -- let's just say that before the item was written, I was personally aware of the fact that the story on Beckett also led that day's sports section of the Times in a city far from New England.

Mark Jurkowitz

Friday, April 14, 2006 8:55:49 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Mark,
Are you sure you're not reading the NYTimes New England edition? It would make sense for the Red Sox opener to lead the sports in that edition, but the paper is zoned and the Sox, unfortunately, did not lead the NYTimes sports page that I saw. And the Beckett story was distinctly unflattering.

Chris

Friday, April 14, 2006 9:17:27 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Chris, while that story certainly revealed Beckett's fiery nature, I wouldn't call it unflattering. And I know it led the Sports section in the papers that people in Washington got that day as well as New England.

Mark Jurkowitz

Saturday, April 15, 2006 3:25:22 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

There were a couple items in the NY Daily News Friday (14 Apr) about media-related issues at the Yankees home opening series this week- The incident where Steinbrenner's security guys had a shoving incident with a couple reporters trying to ask questions on Tuesday or Wednesday- and Richard Huff had an item about how he thought WCBS (Ch. 2) overplayed the Yankee opener with 3 straight "team coverage" stories to open its 5pm news on Tuesday- when the other 3 5pm newscasts led with another story- it reminded me of Ch. 4's coverage in Boston- a former rights-holder for the games being overly effusive in covering their former property/business partner

Friday, December 08, 2006 7:25:29 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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