Do I Want to be the Media?

Some Sunday clarifications as we all seek to figure out exactly what the SEC's new rights agreements mean for everyone. I had more than one media member comment to me during Saturday's football media day that "you want the fans just coming to your website" and "you just want to be the media."

Well, the short answers are: Yes and I don't have a choice.

Up front, let me counter something that may be taken from a series of posts over the past few months regarding the future of networked media's impact upon sports media relations. Brand-based information is on the rise, and it is because the resources for the legacy media to continue being the broad source of information are disappearing.

We are media now not by design, but by necessity. I'll use our local market as an example, but those reading nationwide know it to be true. Both newspapers laid off the women's basketball and Olympic sports full-time beat reporters during cutbacks this spring. It has resulted in a net loss of coverage for those teams. We had zero legacy media at the NCAA Gymnastics Championships in Lincoln. A first ever appearance for our team, that made for an even better story when they advanced to the Super Six.

I have absolutely no doubt that if it happened two or three years ago, one or both of the reporters would have been in Lincoln -- an easy drive from Fayetteville. The worst case scenario would be a stringer hired for one of the two. But a shutout with no one there? Inconceivable.

The SEC track and field championships were a regular for our media, the Baton Rouge Advocate and the Gainesville Sun. This year, only one of those four papers were at indoors and none of them hit the triple crown like they did in the past.

Why? Resources.

That doesn't mean interest from the legacy media is gone -- what's gone is the financing and the willingness to spend discretionary money on sports that may not have immediate circulation return. The precious resources left are now poured into the "media" sports, depending on the school or market.

That brings us to the second of the two questions. Our fans want football on the website, as much or more as they want that live coverage from the men's golf team making a miracle run at the NCAA Championship.

Are we -- the institutional website -- to sit back and concede coverage on our most popular events, and just focus on the events the legacy media no longer invests resources into coverage? Or worse, are we suppose to continue filling in the gaps for the traditional media with our investment?

Here's the point my colleagues in the legacy media, in my opinion, overlook. What they bring -- as I've stressed over and over in this blogspace -- is value-added content. It boggles my mind that I have numerous media upset that we're putting uncut, wall-to-wall video or audio from press events on our website. Let's not go down the copyright road on this, but if everyone has the same 20 minute long presser, what's the difference maker? What is the traffic driver? Cutting that presser into a three-minute highlight package with B-roll and voice over by a beat reporter who can give interpretation.

Instead of playing to advantage -- staffs of experienced journalists -- we're on the verge of a throwdown over running the unedited video and exceding a time window.