International Journal of Sport Communication, 2012, 5, 285-304
© 2012 Human Kinetics, Inc.
www.IJSC-Journal.com
SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY
Oklahoma State University, USA
Ball State University, USA
In this phenomenology, interviews were conducted with former newspaper reporters now working for prominent Internet sports sites. Krumboltz’s (2008)
Planned Happenstance Learning Theory on career development was used as a guiding framework. Data were transcribed and coded by two researchers. Most of the journalists decided to be newspaper sports writers early in life and began garnering professional experiences in their teens or in college. None planned to work for Internet outlets. However, all foresaw the demise of newspapers and landed with Internet outlets through media connections initially formed through newspapers. All but one expressed high satisfaction in their current jobs, citing large travel budgets, freedom to choose writing assignments, national platforms, and no hard time deadlines for submitting stories. These reporters find the future of sports journalism unpredictable, but believe they will be ready. Lehman-Wilizig and Cohen-Avigdor’s media life-cycle model (2004) was used to understand results in a broader context.
Keywords: sport journalism, career change, Planned Happenstance, internet
Long considered an integral part of the Fourth Estate in American culture, the newspaper industry has devolved into a dinosaur in the 21st Century U.S. media landscape. Since the late 1990s, massive layoffs have been common at nearly every major newspaper, with some folding entirely (Alterman, 2008). By the end of 2011, the number of newsroom jobs at U.S. newspapers sank to its lowest level since the American Society of News Editors began tabulating such data in 1978
(Rudawsky, 2011). These staff reductions have left tens of thousands of journalists unemployed (Hodierne, 2009).
Kian is with the School of Media and Strategic Communications, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater,
OK. Zimmerman is with the School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science, Ball State
University, Muncie, IN.
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Some reporters, however, have resurfaced working for Internet sites (Calderone,
2009). This switch is most evident in the emerging field of online sports journalism, where the majority of journalists at the most popular Internet sites began their careers in newspapers (Kian & Hardin, 2009). However, researchers have not examined the reasons why so many marquee sports journalists left newspapers for the Internet, nor the journalists’ experiences with both mediums. This exploratory study helps fill those voids.
More than 35,000 newspaper jobs were slashed from early 2007 through early
2010, and at least 166 U.S. newspapers have ceased publishing a print edition or folded entirely thus far since the turn of the century (Pompeo & Jedrzejczak,
2010). Most newspapers have reduced page size, column width, and total number of pages, resulting in decreased quantity, depth, and scope of coverage (Alterman,
2008; Warren, 2009). The number of Americans who said they read a print newspaper in the last 24 hours recently reached the lowest mark ever recorded in Pew
Research Center polling (2010). That decline in readership is evident in circulation figures at most U.S. newspapers. For example, the daily circulation of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution dropped from 640,000 in 2001 to less than 200,000 in 2010
(New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2011).
Economic consequences from the newspaper industry’s collapse are widespread. Many of the country’s oldest newspapers are in financial turmoil. After losing more than half its market value from 2007–2009, the New York Times Company was in debt more than $1.1 billion (Warren, 2009). A multitude of prominent publications declared bankruptcy in recent years, including the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and
The Washington Post (Farhi, 2008; Nichols & McChesney, 2009). Shareholders of publicly traded U.S. newspaper companies lost more than 80% of their total investments in 2009 (Warren, 2009).
Discrepancies exist as to when the decline of the newspaper industry began.
Researchers found various causal conditions in every decade beginning with the
1940s, when the first decrease in circulation per household was recorded (Varian,
2010). Nichols and McChesney (2009) cited 1950 as the first year print advertising declined—coinciding with the emergence of television news—but pointed to the
1970s, a period when corporate ownership and consolidation began, as the primary origin of newspapers’ collapse. Access to the Internet grew exponentially between
1996 and 2000, and Americans spent significantly less time reading newspapers as a result (Kaye & Johnson, 2003). Dimmick, Chen, and Li (2004) contended the year 2000 was detrimental to newspapers due to the advent of high-speed handheld devices and interactive, personalized applications. That same year saw online classified advertising site Craigslist file for incorporation, resulting in a shift of advertising to the Internet (Farhi, 2008).

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The recent decline of print newspapers has generally been attributed to two concurrent causes: a mass shift to online news consumption and the economic recession (Dimmock et al., 2004). The growth of online media as a reliable news source took shape in the early 1990s, when major publications such as The New
York Times and The Washington Post began supplementing their print editions with Internet coverage (Palser, 2002). By the mid-1990s, the majority of national news publications had separate online news departments, some with independent newsrooms (Palser, 2002). Online readership statistics grew exponentially as access to news became more convenient. Before the turn of the century, roughly a quarter of Americans had already decreased the amount of time they spent reading hard copies of newspapers. By 2004, newspapers had become the least-preferred primary news source for U.S. youth (Nguyen & Western, 2006).
As consumers shifted to the Internet, advertisers followed suit. Online advertising was less expensive, and a faltering economy meant many advertisers could no longer afford expensive buys in print publications (Farhi, 2008). This problem was compounded by the advent of Craigslist in 2000, online auction site eBay in 2002, and other low-cost classified advertising sites that demolished what remained of newspapers’ market share, evident by newspaper classified advertising dropping more than 25% in the first half of 2008 (Warren, 2009). Moreover, nearly 60% of newspaper ad revenue comes from retail, automotive, financial services, and real estate, all among the hardest-hit industries during the ongoing U.S. recession.
Employment, real estate, and auto listings totaled $1.8 billion in losses for newspaper companies in the first half of the 2008 calendar year alone (Farhi, 2008). This drastic decline in revenue redefined the traditional model of newspapers (Warren,
2009). Newspapers created Web sites, in part, to accrue online advertising. However, the ad revenue newspapers gained from their Internet sites has not been enough to counteract the losses from lower circulation figures and a diminished number of print ads (Alterman, 2008). Further, online ad revenue for newspapers generally has not grown since the dot.com bubble began subsiding in 2005 (Farhi, 2008).
The disintegration of the newspaper industry appeared to be a circular occurrence. The growth of online news caused decreases in newspaper circulation, which led to further degeneration of an already-diminished product (Nichols &
McChesney, 2009). Brown (2005) surmised that fewer readers meant losses in advertising revenue, resulting in newspaper staff layoffs that ultimately lead to a lesser-quality product purchased by fewer. As revenues decreased exponentially and journalist positions disappeared, Americans increasingly turned to the Internet as a primary news source (Varian, 2010). This circular occurrence—highlighted by newspaper leadership’s failure to recognize the magnitude of the threat the Internet posed to their product, or how to best capitalize on this new medium—aptly fits under the Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor (2004) model, which correlates the rise of a new media (i.e., the Internet in this case) with the convergence or obsolescence of an older, more established medium (e.g., newspapers).
Accounts of postnewspaper careers are varied, including transitions to fields such as government policy, education, and entrepreneurship (Calderone, 2009). In a survey of

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595 newspaper employees who had been laid off in the previous decade, only 6% of respondents returned to full-time employment in the newspaper industry (Hodierne,
2009). Individual chronicles are more abstract, detailing displaced reporters turning to such vocations as yoga instructor, horse masseuse, and preacher (Helliker, 2009).
Some of the most common transitions were to freelance journalism, alternative news outlets, public relations, online media, and academia (Owens, 2008; Sefton, 2009).
Specialized journalists may have experienced even more adversity than other writers (Paulson, 2009). As editors allocated a greater portion of their diminished staff to general assignments, daily beats including, health, education, environment, and religion were often discontinued. Arizona’s Mesa Tribune completely dropped local, high school sports coverage (Taylor, 2009). Many national and foreign bureaus shut down, creating an environment in which most papers relied exclusively on the
Associated Press or other news services to provide coverage of global news events
(Warren, 2009). Possibly as a result, newspapers became the least preferred choice for local, national, and international news, whereas the Internet ranked first in all of these categories (Brown, 2005).
Many former newspaper reporters were able to transfer to careers somewhat compatible with their skills. For example, some investigative journalists worked in private investigation (Folkenflik, 2009). Government jobs were not an uncommon avenue for displaced journalists, with some hired as speakers, campaign managers, and communication directors (Rutenberg, 2009). However, it was the Internet, and the reporting opportunities it provided, that became a particularly popular destination for the some of the most talented former newspaper sports department employees. The demand for these sports journalists’ skills could be attributed to the more specialized interests of sport media consumers (e.g., wanting information primarily on their favorite sports, teams, athletes, etc.). Research has shown that as audiences continue to fragment online, media outlets will respond to news consumers’ interests (Tewksbury, 2005; Webster & Ksiazek, 2012). Based on the proliferation of alternative sports news outlets (e.g., team- and sport-centric sites), the audience for online sports coverage remains very strong.
Mainstream sites such as Yahoo! Sports and ESPN.com dominate Internet sports traffic numbers (The Big Lead, 2011). Many writers at these sites are former newspaper sports reporters who switched to the Internet as the newspaper industry faltered (Kian & Hardin, 2009). However, academic research regarding Internet sports journalism remains limited. The majority of examinations focused on gender-related differences in online sports coverage (e.g., Butler & Sagas, 2008b;
Cooper, 2008; Cunningham, 2003; Grappendorf, Henderson, Sanders, & Peel,
2009; Kian & Clavio, 2011; Kian, Mondello, & Vincent, 2009; Kian, Vincent, &
Mondello, 2008; Sanderson, 2010). Several authors analyzed how the growth of the Internet affected newspaper sports writers and other traditional media (Butler
& Sagas, 2008a, Reed, 2011; Schultz & Sheffer, 2007; 2010; Sheffer & Schultz,
2010; Wigley & Meirick, 2008), whereas a few studied attitudes or experiences of sports bloggers (Hardin, Zhong, & Corrigan, 2012; John Curley Center for Sports
Journalism at Penn State, 2009; Kian, Burden, & Shaw, 2011). None, however, have examined former newspaper sports journalists who now work for Internet sites.

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There is little academic research on the experiences of former newspaper reporters now employed by Internet sites. Surveys (e.g., Creedon, 1994; Hardin, 2005;
Hardin & Whiteside, 2006; Lapchick, Moss II, Russell, & Scearce, 2011; Miloch,
Pedersen, Smucker, & Whisenant, 2005; Pedersen, Osborne, Whisenant, & Lim,
2009) provided demographic data and some information on the experiences of sports journalists. However, interview-based studies offered more in-depth examinations on the experiences of those who help frame sport to the masses (e.g., Billings, 2009;
Cramer, 1994; Hardin & Shain, 2005a; Hardin & Whiteside, 2009; Kian, 2007).
There is a lack of interview-based scholarly research with online sports journalists.
This exploratory study attempts to help fill that void by uncovering the professional experiences of sports journalists who were successful newspaper writers but now work for online sites.
This is the first interview-based study of former newspaper sports journalists who work for Internet sites. Thus, research questions were employed rather than hypotheses.
RQ1: What were the professional backgrounds of prominent online sports writers?
RQ2: What experiences did these sports writers share in their job transitions from newspapers to online sites?
RQ3: What commonalities and differences within jobs in their new field have these journalists experienced?
RQ4: What commonalities and differences within jobs in newspaper sports writing did these journalists experience, and how did those experiences relate to their current jobs?
The Planned Happenstance Learning Theory (PHLT) of career development served as a conceptual framework to guide this study, particularly in the creation of a guide for semistructured interviews, and while examining the dominant themes in the data analysis. This theory stipulates that successful employees must adapt to a rapidly changing labor market to succeed in almost all vocations (Krumboltz
& Levin, 2004). In describing this theory, Krumboltz (2009) noted “The situation in which individuals find themselves are partly a function of factors over which they have no control and partly a function of actions that the individuals have indicated themselves” (p. 136). PHLT evolved from Krumboltz’s (1979) Social
Learning Theory which delved into career choices, as well as challenges and detours within those careers (Krumboltz & Levin, 2004). However, the PHLT is seemingly well-suited to guide a study on Internet sports journalism, because this specific profession did not even exist when many current online journalists were initially planning careers.

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The qualitative inquiry known as phenomenology was used for this study, due to the researchers’ goal of uncovering some of the commonalities and differences in
Internet sports writers’ experiences. Phenomenological research focuses on deciphering the meaning of lived experiences for a group of people (Husserel, 1964).
It should be noted that even by taking the most liberal approach in determining possible subjects for this study, the number of prominent former newspaper sports reporters now writing for mainstream, U.S.-based Internet sports sites is at most
30–40 individuals, many of whom are among the most recognizable sports writers in America. That number is probably considerably higher when nonwriters (e.g., editors, producers, etc.) are included, although the focus of this research was on high-profile writers. Because this study examines the subjects’ actual work experiences, the authors elected to quote all participants on the record rather than attempting to conceal their identities. Such anonymity would have required discarding a notable amount of rich data from the various narratives, including anecdotes that were vital to the subjects’ careers. Cramer (1994) used the same approach when interviewing another small group of elite journalists, directly quoting 19 of the most prominent women in sport media, several of whom may have been identified by media consumers via details described in their experiences.
The authors had phone conversations or exchanged electronic messages with former and current newspaper and/or Internet sports reporters in an attempt to determine suitable candidates to interview. A list of 12 Internet sports reporters was identified as ideal candidates. All were recognized nationally among their peers, all worked for major online sports news sites (e.g., ESPN Internet, FoxSports.com), and all had developed journalism reputations through their experiences in working for daily newspapers.
Through industry contacts of the authors or public e-mail, all 12 were contacted, with five agreeing to participate and be quoted on the record. Through additional conversations with reporters, including those interviewed, another eight prominent journalists were identified and contacted, with three agreeing to be interviewed. Therefore, 20 prominent online sports journalists were contacted, with these eight participating (note: each bio includes the position each journalist held when interviewed):
• Scott French is the No. 1 soccer writer and also a copy editor/reporter for
ESPN’s Los Angeles-based regional Internet site. French also works parttime for NFL.com and previously worked for multiple newspapers, served as senior editor at Soccer America magazine, and was managing editor of Major
League Soccer Magazine
• Nancy Gay is senior editor of National Football League (NFL) content for Fox
Sports.com. Gay also was an NFL reporter and columnist for AOL FanHouse.
She was the lead NFL columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and is the first woman to be granted voting rights on the Pro Football Hall of Fame
Selection Committee

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• Jeff Goodman is a national men’s college basketball reporter for CBSSports.
com and previously held the same position for FoxSports.com. He entered the online industry as a basketball analyst for Scout.com. Goodman is a former national sports writer for the Associated Press who also worked for several newspapers
• Jemele Hill is a national sports columnist for ESPN Internet who regularly appears on a variety of ESPN television network shows, such as ESPN First
Take, Jim Rome is Burning , and Outside the Lines. She previously worked as a sports journalist for the Raleigh News & Observer, Detroit Free Press, and
Orlando Sentinel .
• A.J. Perez is an enterprise sports reporter for FoxSports.com. Previously, he was a National Hockey League and general assignment reporter for CBSSports.
com. Perez entered the online realm as an investigative reporter on drugs in sport for AOL FanHouse and was a sports staff writer for USA Today and the
Long Beach Press-Telegram
• Joe Posnanski is a senior columnist for Sports Illustrated. He was hired to write for SI.com, but allowed to maintain to his own popular Web site, Joe
Blogs . Posnanski began his independent blogging career while also serving as a sports columnist for The Kansas City Star. He previously held sports positions with the Charlotte Observer, The Cincinnati Post, and The Augusta Chronicle
• Wright Thompson is a senior writer and reporter for ESPN.com and ESPN The
Magazine who formerly worked as a sports journalist at The Kansas City Star and Times-Picayune in New Orleans
• Calvin Watkins is a pro football beat reporter for ESPN Internet who also regularly appears on ESPN television shows. He previously served as the national NFL writer and Dallas Cowboys beat writer for The Dallas Morning
News . Watkins initially left newspapers to serve as a national NFL writer for
AOL FanHouse.
A semistructured, loose interview guide using PHLT as a framework was designed to gauge the experiences of these prominent online sports journalists. The interview guide was designed based largely on previous interview-based research with sports media (Hardin & Shain, 2006; Kian, 2007). All interviews were conducted via telephone between June 2010 and June 2011, digitally recorded, fully transcribed, and later coded individually by both researchers in a search for dominant themes.
A second coder was used for the examination of all articles to add reliability to the analysis. Working individually, both researchers wrote theoretical memos from data prevalent in the coding sheets before comparing results (Emerson, Fretz, &
Shaw, 1995). The two researchers together then used the constant comparative method to decipher and define key concepts by unifying their supporting data
(Turner, 1981). Four primary themes emerged from the data analysis, which was subjective and interpretative.

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All but one of the eight interviewees decided to pursue a career in journalism by the time they were in college, with all eventually focusing on newspapers shortly after starting in the media industry. Five knew they wanted to work in newspapers by the time they were 19. Earliest in making that career choice was Goodman, who took advantage of his upbringing in Boston to pursue interviewing superstar professional athletes for his middle-school newspaper. Among the athletes Goodman interviewed as a youth were basketball legends Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, and Magic Johnson. But it was James Worthy and Michael Cooper, teammates of Johnson with the
1980s Los Angeles Lakers’ dynasty, who were Goodman’s first major interviews:
I went down to the hotel when the Lakers were playing the Celtics . . . and
(Worthy and Cooper) told me to call. I can’t believe they did because I probably looked like I was 10 and sounded like I was 8 or 9. I ended up calling them later that night. I had written down like 20 questions to ask . . . questions a 13-year-old would come up with, but didn’t know how to record it.
I ended up having to record it on my parents’ answering machine that went
‘beep.’ Every couple of seconds, you’d hear the ‘beep.’ So, James Worthy is doing this interview, again with what he thinks is probably a 10 year-old, and constantly through the interview, it’s ‘beep, beep, beep.’ He never said a word, just did the interview. I’ll never forget that because that’s pretty impressive to do when you are on the verge of being a Hall of Famer; and he was doing it before a Celtics-Lakers game! After that day, I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Half of the journalists wrote for local professional newspapers while in high school and six worked for their college student newspapers. All but two earned college degrees. Watkins had the latest start in newspapers, using family connections to help land a position with the Baltimore Times. Then 22, Watkins had not done any professional or amateur newspaper reporting. “I did some radio and TV, and even went to technical school for a while,” Watkins said. “But I always knew I wanted to be a sports writer, just didn’t pursue it. It definitely helped that my grandfather had worked in the business.” Thompson desired to become a writer from a young age, but not in sports. However, that was his first assignment for the newspaper at the
University of Missouri: “I wanted to write about music, and they just assign me to sports. I was pissed. . . . Turns out I was lucky to have had very supportive editors.”
All eight of the interviewees mostly followed the classic career advancement progression for newspaper writers, leaving one job for a newspaper that offered a larger circulation and/or more prominent responsibilities. However, all noted that this model is no longer practical in today’s industry. In fact, Gay said she would discourage any young writer who expressed a desire to emulate her career advancement. After serving as the sports editor at The Daily Texan, the campus newspaper for the University of Texas at Austin, Gay landed her first full-time position with the Coloradoan, a Gannett-owned paper in Fort Collins, Colorado, followed by positions with the Orlando Sentinel and San Jose Mercury News before landing her “dream job” with the San Francisco Chronicle:

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The business has changed so much and continues to change. I’d hate to sound cruel, but any person who thinks they are going to follow the old career track to say ‘I’m going to end up with The New York Times or Washington Post;’ is just naïve and doesn’t understand that’s not going to happen much anymore.
. . . Young writers cannot look at me and think they are going to do the same.
Sadly for them, that was a different era.
Among these eight subjects, seven determined they wanted to be a journalist while still in their teens. Posnanski, in contrast, had no inkling of being a sports journalist until later:
I failed out of accounting (in college) and had no idea what to do with my life. I wrote letters to various people; one of them was the sports editor of the
Charlotte Observer . He was kind enough to write back and tell me a little bit about the job, and offer me an opportunity to do some freelance work. It was just purely out of desperation that I ended up in this thing.
In addition to the majority identifying their desired career early in life, six of the interviewees exhibited foresight in leaving newspapers to work for Internet sites before being let go from their newspaper jobs. This was in contrast to what many of their colleagues endured over the past decade, which was marred by industry layoffs (Hodierne, 2009). Most interviewees landed their current jobs through industry connections formed while working for newspapers. “In so many careers, and especially this one, it’s more about who you know than what you know or do,” French said.
Some sought opportunities to transition to the Internet, whereas others were recruited. Watkins contacted people already working for online sites whom he had met in the newspaper industry. He only began exploring this potential move when his last publication, The Dallas Morning News, experienced heavy layoffs on multiple occasions. “I still believed there was a future for newspapers,” he said.
“But when I started seeing a lot of good people lose their jobs and most everyone being asked to take salary cuts, I knew it was time to make a career change.” A guarantee of at least 50 television appearances per year was the key selling point for Hill, who viewed transitioning from being a columnist at the Orlando Sentinel to a multimedia personality for the world’s largest sports media conglomerate as an easy choice after being recruited to join ESPN:
I made the jump, because I looked around the landscape and saw that a lot of columnists were beginning to get larger platforms on television. It was just a matter of kind of following were the market was going. I watched shows like
Around the Horn and PTI, and most of the shows’ guests and hosts are former newspaper columnists. I saw going to ESPN as a way to brand myself and take advantage of the enormous media platform.
Regardless of how they left newspapers, all of the journalists exhibited the flexibility and risk-taking approach needed to remain successful in an “imperfect”

294 Kian and Zimmerman and “unpredictable” job market as detailed in PHLT (Krumboltz & Levin, 2004).
“One thing I am proud of is that I have always been able to hit the next wave at the perfect spot,” Hill said. “I got out of newspapers in 2006, and while the industry was bad then, it became much worse shortly after I left.” However, these subjects were not immune from staffing cuts. Perez was laid off by the Long Beach Press-
Telegram (although he was hired back a few weeks later), USA Today, and AOL
FanHouse, his first position with an online site. “The entire industry is down, so most people have been laid off,” Perez said. “It’s a horrible experience. But I’ve learned to respond quickly and have been more fortunate than most in landing other jobs, usually for more money.”
Gay’s transition from newspapers was more seamless and voluntary than a similar move 14 months earlier by her husband Michael Martinez, a former New
York Yankees beat reporter for The New York Times. Martinez became managing editor for the Internet site, National Football Post, after being part of a massive layoff at the San Jose Mercury News. In contrast, Gay said management never approached her about leaving during her 25 total years working for newspapers before she decided to accept a standing buyout offer open to all reporters at the
San Francisco Chronicle :
With the way the business was going, I knew I was ready to take the buyout, but I had already used some connections I had to get in touch with a few people. . . . I ended up getting a salary increase from AOL, a buyout, and the
Chronicle was able to save money, so it worked out all around.
Whereas most of these subjects offered some complaints about online sites, seven of the eight spoke fondly on advantages of writing for the Internet compared with working for traditional, print newspapers. All noted that the growth of the Internet has changed the ways journalists gather, report, and write on the news, which they claimed has mostly made their work routines easier than when they were employed by newspapers. The majority of these journalists also contended such changes have elevated and enhanced the content of both their writing and reporting. These improvements resulting from working for Internet sports sites comprised the primary theme emerging from the data.
None of the eight are required to write from an office. However, in contrast to findings on prominent sports bloggers (Kian, Clavio, Vincent, & Shaw, 2011), most of these former newspaper journalists do not consider working at a home as a major benefit of their new jobs, because they rarely had to appear in offices after advancing to more coveted, higher-profile positions at their previous newspaper jobs. These interviewees often had to relocate to a different city after taking newspaper positions. In contrast, none had to physically move due to transitioning to the Internet, which several cited as a major reason why they accepted initial offers. Seven of the eight received salary increases in their first Internet jobs, and three attained significant raises. French, however, is the lone exception to those now earning higher salaries. Despite being a national soccer writer for the biggest sports media outlet in the world, he does not receive medical benefits from ESPN and thus has opted to drive from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico, for affordable

Sports Writers From Newspapers to Online 295 dental work. Further, even though he also works as a part-time copy editor for NFL.
com, French still earns less total income than he did while working for newspapers:
There are some things I am satisfied with, but I’m paid less than I was 16 years ago. How much we as a profession (sports journalists) are paid is disastrous. . . .
We’re working in a business that has become entirely corporate. Realistically, we live in a corporatocracy. . . . I just think it’s a bad time for journalism, but it’s an even worse time for newspapers. Not necessarily a bad time for online, but who knows how it’s gonna play out?
All eight journalists spoke positively about having greater freedom to decide what specific events to attend, what to write about, and the benefits of more flexible travel budgets from their respective online sites than they experienced working for newspapers, especially in recent years. Goodman picks top basketball games to attend, without being overly concerned about location. He said he never had such freedom in creating his own assignments in newspapers, and especially not while employed by the Associated Press.
Further, all noted that writing for a larger and national audience is a primary advantage of working for online sites. Hill said she receives far more responses to her work than she did in newspapers. Hill opted to hire an assistant just to sort through her ESPN e-mail on a daily basis. “Even if I wrote a really good newspaper column that was informative and provocative, I might get at most 60 e-mails,”
Hill said. “But when I wrote a good column for ESPN a few weeks ago, I got
2200 e-mails.” The interviewees also noted more freedom in writing styles, and no set limit or minimum on the word count for articles, two aspects which differ significantly from their experiences with newspapers. “The great thing about the
Internet for me is the complete freedom to (write about) what you want, for as long as you want to write, and as often as you want to write,” Posnanski said. However, whereas all of these journalists mentioned a lack of spatial restrictions as a plus, several noted new difficulties in catering to online audiences, who generally favor shorter articles than newspaper readers. “A perfect story is somewhere between
2000 and 3000 words,” French said. “But what I find is that (my Internet readers are) more interested in short, bite-sized bits that are either informative, or light and breezy. . . . And I don’t enjoy doing those.”
The journalists said they usually do not have time deadlines for electronically filling articles with their respective Internet sites; yet their stories are published quickly and can be consumed instantly by readers before content becomes what
Perez dubbed “yesterday’s news.” Three journalists specifically cited the lack of hard deadlines as the primary reporting advantage for online sites. Goodman emphasized that having to adhere to strict deadlines for multiple articles after games was a main reason for his “unhappiness” while working for the Associated Press bureau in New York City:
With the AP, it was ‘get it done as quickly as you can,’ especially if you were writing a game story at night. Now, I find myself hanging around the locker room, being the last one to leave and hopefully get something that nobody else has. . . . This also lets me try to establish relationships with coaches, and that’s where you break a lot of your news.

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Thompson offered similar sentiments, implying that early deadlines for content for the next day’s paper are among the reasons for the precipitous decline of newspapers:
(In newspapers) I’ve been on deadline writing for that ESPN 2 telecast that kicks off at 7:45 (p.m.) from (LSU) Tiger Stadium, where you have to file shortly after the game starts. You do the best you can with what’s provided, and a lot of writers do a great job with those limitations. But still, when you’re already fighting for relevance, it makes it very difficult. (Newspapers) should be forced to run an enormous flashing neon sign that says, ‘You don’t need us’ when you have to write: ‘This game ended before publication; Check our Web site.’
Perez, who reports on drugs in sport, said an advantage of the Internet sites compared with most newspapers is that online editors are more open to publishing articles that cite unnamed sources. “It was almost impossible to get anything published at USA Today with unnamed sources even if you had it from multiple people and were 100% positive that it was accurate,” Perez said. “Internet sites seem to trust their writers’ judgment more.”
Several of these journalists also noted the convenience of being able to edit articles even after publication on the Internet. In contrast, only apologies and belated corrections can be made after factual errors or offensive comments appear in traditional newspapers. However, an Internet writer may not be able to correct an error before it becomes a major issue. Hill said she painfully learned this lesson after being suspended by ESPN for a column in which she used a Nazi analogy—“rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler is a victim” (Sussman, 2008)—to describe fans of the Detroit Pistons who cheered for Boston against the Lakers in the 2008 National
Basketball Association Finals. Although she sent in that particular column in the morning and it went through copy-editing before being posted to the World Wide
Web, Hill said the editing-chain consists of less “hoops and hurdles” and usually fewer readers before content is published on ESPN Internet, compared with most of the newspapers where she had previously worked:
That was a major mistake on my end. I take full blame for it and it was not the copy editors’ fault. . . . But it probably would not have made it in a newspaper, because the editing chain is a little different. We went in a few hours later and took out the Nazi reference. But if you Google my name and Hitler, a lot of hits will come up; so I don’t think a mistake you make at ESPN will ever really go away even if you can correct it on the Internet.
In contrast, Posnanski’s biggest blunder came on his initial story in the business as a freelance reporter for the Charlotte Observer, misreporting the day Magic
Johnson was to make a local appearance. “To sort of make up (for that mistake), the editor asked me to stand in front of the department store where (Johnson) was supposed to show, and tell people that I had messed up in the paper, that he was not coming,” Posnanski said. The damage from that mistake would have been largely mitigated had he been able to go back in the published article and correct the error before it was seen by many readers, a process available for Posnanski on his blog and for his content on SI.com.

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In part to fulfill new responsibilities, but also to aid their own evolvement in working for multiple media platforms, all eight journalists have expanded their skill-sets (e.g., podcasts, blogs, HTML coding, maintaining Twitter feeds, television appearances, etc.). Hill said that all journalists must be more versatile due to the advent of the Internet:
A good thing about being at ESPN is that I have been able to pick up a variety of skills that I will be able to use for the future. When I was growing up, the only thing a newspaper sports writer needed to know was to how be a reporter and write. But if you are going to be a reporter today, you must be able to do a lot of things or you aren’t going to make it.
None of the eight journalists interviewed expressed confidence when asked to predict the long-term future of Internet sports journalism. “Who knows what’s coming in this industry?” French asked. “We have seen such dramatic changes in the past 15 years in newspapers and all media, and especially with how people get their information.”
Even when asked to speculate on short-term changes for Internet sports media most of these online journalists claimed difficulty due to the constantly evolving nature of their specific medium. “I just think it’s shifting so fast that it’s very difficult for people to keep up,” Posnanski said. “And I think any time you feel like you’ve got your finger on the pulse, it shifts on you and changes.” In the short-term, six of the respondents predicted further infiltration into local markets by major Internet sites, specifically citing the city-specific sports sites already launched through ESPN
Internet (e.g., ESPN L.A., ESPN Chicago, etc.). Half also noted that general assignment sports writers and columnists will become sparse due to the specificity offered through the Internet. However, even though the eight subjects all work for Internet sites, the majority expressed significant concerns regarding what they perceived as an overall decline in the accuracy, quality, and integrity of sports journalism as it increasingly transfers from traditional mediums to the Internet. Watkins dubbed this
“the TMZ effect,” in reference to the popular celebrity gossip Web site:
The biggest problem with sports journalism shifting mostly to the Internet is that it has become like talk radio; some people are writing gossip and have no integrity. When I moved online, a friend told me I would become the TMZ of the NFL. While that’s not true, even TMZ has a level of integrity and responsibility that is far more than you see on some of these blogs. This really hurts the reputation and credibility of all of us.
As a national college basketball reporter, Goodman said the Internet has made beat reporting far more competitive due to the never-ending competition to be the first to break news. He said that the increasing presence of school-specific, fan-friendly Web sites for college sport teams, such as those affiliated with Rivals.com and Scout.com, as well as the prevalence of message boards and independent bloggers, has increased competition for reporters working for newspapers and mainstream Internet sites:

298 Kian and Zimmerman
I’ve been able to break my share of stories… but I’ve learned, ‘I must make sure I get this thing right.’ People are jumping the gun on things and not doing the research, and then putting out information that’s incorrect… You’ve got a lot of blogs out there; a lot of people that can tweet and just put out stuff that they hear. And then somebody Tweets it to somebody like me and then (as a beat reporter) I have to chase it.
Despite their frustration with a lack of industry standards for online journalism compared with traditional media, and the future uncertainty of their profession, all eight of these prominent reporters expect the Internet to continue to grow as the dominant media force in sports journalism. Whatever that entails, the majority of these journalists are confident they will adapt. However, whereas these online journalists are optimistic about their current vocation and their talents, they expressed less confidence in their former medium. “Newspapers had a pretty good ride for 100 years, but newspapers need to change,” Posnanski said. Two of the interviewees hypothesized that print newspapers will disappear entirely, or become limited to just the big-name publications. Others projected that most newspapers will only be published online. However, a near consensus emerging from these interviews was a genuine sense of nostalgia for a bygone newspaper era. Hill said her love for newspapers will never waver, even if they stop existing entirely:
I will always credit newspapers for making me into the journalist that I am, because I learned basically everything in an old-school way that serves me very well in the new medium. But the reality is their economic situation is far too grim for me to have actually counted on that being there for years to come. I don’t feel like I abandoned newspapers. Instead I feel like they were my foundation and I used that foundation in another medium to still perform many of the same job duties.
All of the interviewees said newspaper management unwisely discounted the Internet as a threat to their existence. Several noted that the overall quality of newspaper content has been hurt by cost-cutting on expenditures and layoffs due to a lack of advertising and declining circulation figures, corporate takeovers, and subsequent consolidation. French contended that the demise of newspapers has diminished all U.S. news reporting:
When newspapers stopped making decisions based on journalism, they became lesser papers. . . . There’s always going to be a New York Times, Washington
Post , L.A. Times. . . . But the business I got into in 1979, 1980 no longer exists.
You can’t be a newspaperman the way you could before.
Whereas the overall number of full-time print sports writers has dramatically decreased with the rise of the Internet, the journalists in this study took advantage of a new medium to land more prominent positions and earn higher salaries. At the time of these interviews, the eight journalists ranged in ages from their early-30s to their mid-50s. All knew before the age of 23 that they wanted to be newspaper

Sports Writers From Newspapers to Online 299 sports writers, with most pursuing such careers and honing their skills as teenagers.
Seven quickly ascended to high-level newspaper jobs. However, none ever planned to work for an Internet site, in part because online sports journalism did not exist when they began their writing careers.
PHLT presumes that unplanned events in career management—such as the rapid demise of newspapers over the last 20 years—provide unexpected career opportunities for those most adaptable to change (Mitchell, Levin, & Krumboltz,
1999). Thus, while many newspaper writers struggled to transition to unrelated careers in the wake of job losses, seven of these eight individuals actually benefited from newspapers’ decline. They were proactive in recognizing opportunities in a perceived time of chaos, which is paramount to successful career management in an unpredictable market under PHLT (Mitchell et al., 1999).
Whereas most of their job duties are similar to when they worked in newspapers, each of these journalists acquired new skills to adapt to new technology. The rise of the Internet was the primary impetus for the demise of newspapers, which resulted in massive loss of employment for many newspaper reporters (Varian,
2010). However, in part because of their willingness to change careers and adaption of new skills, these interviewees were among a select few sports writers from newspapers sports who were able to hop on the evolving media life-cycle model that resulted in the Internet providing a more user-friendly and popular medium than newspapers (Lehman-Wilzig & Cohen-Avigdor, 2004). Further, all now write for national outlets, while only two did so at any time during their newspaper careers.
Seven of the eight expressed high levels of satisfaction as Internet sports journalists, which differed from some previous studies on newspaper sports writers (Hardin
& Shain, 2005b; Kian, 2007). However, the relative happiness of these journalists cannot be generalized to all online sports media, because these particular subjects hold highly coveted positions at mainstream, national Web sites.
It should be noted that French was the only interviewee who did not express high levels of job satisfaction in online journalism, or earn a higher salary by transitioning from newspapers. However, he is also the only one of these eight who focused much of his writing efforts on a sport (soccer) that is not among the most profitable in the U.S. at any level of competition. Thus, it may have literally paid off for these journalists to have concentrated most of their newspaper and online writing efforts on the more popular professional and college men’s team sports.
Moreover, the majority expressed confidence in their long-term futures in online sports journalism even though none felt confident in predicting what that would entail. However, despite their successes and increased wealth, these journalists conveyed a genuine sense of sorrow for the demise of the newspaper industry, but also noted that ineptitude by many newspaper publishers and editors who failed to grasp the potential of the Internet helped lead to the industry’s downfall.
Results from this exploratory study should not be generalized to all online sports journalists. Only eight reporters were interviewed, all reside in the U.S., and all are prominent Internet sports journalists. In contrast, most online sports journalists do not work for the more popular sports Web sites and instead write for smaller, often nonprofit blogs, which they often own and operate (JCCSJ, 2009). Further, most

300 Kian and Zimmerman online journalists do not possess the traditional media backgrounds and extensive training of these selected journalists (Hardin et al., 2012).
With the exception of French, who predominately writes on soccer, all interviewees focus their writing efforts on the most popular professional and college men’s team sports (i.e., college and professional football and men’s basketball, and Major League Baseball). All of the new media journalists in this study must be considered successes in sports journalism, with several arguably among the most recognizable in this relatively new field. Thus, their experiences cannot be generalized to the normal sports writer employed by an Internet site. However, their views and writing could have considerable influence on sports journalism due to their prominence in the industry.
Finally, the researchers’ decision to ask journalists to be quoted on the record may have resulted in some potential subjects electing not to participate, while some of those who were interviewed may have been more cautious when making comments that could be deemed critical. Even though some of those interviewed noted that their status as successful journalists meant that they would be more willing to speak on the record, the subjects may have been less likely to state anything that they could perceive as potentially harmful to their careers, particularly in respect to their current employers.
Research on multiple areas of online sports journalism is needed. Potential studies could examine content within specific Web sites on different sports, or from multiple Internet sites on one sport or a variety of sports. Content comparisons for such areas as gender, nationality, and race could be made between mainstream
Internet sports sites (e.g., ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, etc.) and blogs. In addition, research is needed on popular subscription sports sites, such as the many college fan sites offered by Rivals.com and Scout.com. Moreover, there is little research on sports message board content or actual message board users (Clavio, 2008). It would also be beneficial to learn more information about who actually produces the content, because most online sports journalists or bloggers do not have pictures of themselves attached to their commentary. Even after this study, little is known about the overall nature of online sports journalists. Thus, additional research is needed just to differentiate between the various types of online sports journalists and bloggers. Finally, future studies are needed on the work settings, routines, and journalistic standards for online sports journalists, as well as the effects of content from Internet sports journalism.
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