By Tom Donelson
In the last election, various Internet websites played crucial roles in the election on both the right and the left. During the infamous CBS story about George Bush National Guard duty, it was the various blog sites that exposed CBS nefarious reporting and essentially ended the career of Dan Rather.
Having written on public policies for a quarter of century, I will tell you that various websites such as The Command Post or Instapundit gave and still gives superior reporting on Iraq or the war on terror than the New York Times. With households owning their own PC, people can communicate quickly on any issues and the rise of bloggers and websites is providing a new expansion for broadcasting news.
Drudge Report is the granddaddy of Internet News. Matt Drudge acts as much as editor as he does reporter and much of his Drudge Report links to new stories around the world. Most of these stories are often more substantial that what readers can read through their local media.
Which brings us to the world of boxing. Today, boxing gets very little attention in most newspaper or television. Showtime Nick Charles quipped to me that ESPN rarely, if ever, showed highlights of the fights they actually showed on their own Sports Center. You could go a whole week and not hear a peep about boxing on the premier 24-hour cable sport network.
Most of boxing reporting is being done on the web and while this has presented many challenges, it is also enhancing the media coverage of the sweet science. While there is much to be desired in online boxing journalism, there is also much to be admired. Most of the better writing on boxing occurs on various websites such as Ringsports.com and Boxingscene.com. If you actually want to know what is going on in the world of boxing, you need to read some of the leading boxing websites.
Boxing is not the only sport that is going in this direction. Tennis is another sport that is becoming more web intensive in reporting. For most sports, it is the Internet that is providing direct information for fans who follow those sports. Print and television mostly just concentrate on the major sports such as football, basketball or baseball. In most broadcast or morning newspaper, you would be pressed to know that other sports actually exist. And they do get coverage; it is as often in mocking terms as reporting.
Most newspaper or television new rooms don’t have reporters with much knowledge on boxing and there is a general distaste for the sport in many sports department. In the recent Winky Wright-Shane Mosley, I sat next to a reporter who admitted that if he was not assigned to the fight; he would have stayed home. He didn’t care for boxing. His attitude is typical of many sport reporters today.
In the future, you will be seeing more alliances between specific websites and many mainstream media outlets for reporting. As more Americans get their news from the Internet and as mainstream outlet continue to lose more viewers, sports like Boxing might be given a second chance for revival because of the Internet. The door that has been closing on boxing in many of the older media is opening up on the Net and in the new media.
