The Great Divide: Why old and new media must bridge the gap

Newspapers used to be as much a part of Americana as a slice of apple pie, pickup trucks and baseball. But today newspapers are hemorrhaging jobs and struggling to find advertisers. The Internet gets most of the blame for this phenomenon. Why would people pay for a subscription when they can read most if not all of both their daily local newspaper and national newspapers online?

Furthermore, the classified advertising section that used to be the life-blood of newspapers has been replaced by online forums like craigslist.com. The reason once again, is simple: classified ads charge by the word and craigslist is free. The crisis in the newspaper industry has gotten so bad that even major city dailies in places like Denver and San Francisco have closed up shop.

Yes, it appears frighteningly imminent that the death of the daily newspaper is upon us.

However, there is still a market for news and reporting. It's not that people aren't interested in the news anymore; they just don't rely on the newspaper to get it. Gone are the days that you learned everything that happened yesterday the following morning when you picked the paper out of your driveway or front step and read it over your morning coffee.

By the time the newspaper arrives at your place of residence the late local news has already covered most of the major stories in the paper, and anyone interested in whether the Braves won their game has already found the result on the internet.

The Internet has the immediacy that the newspaper lacks. Good luck finding out about anything that happened after midnight in the print edition of your newspaper.

Nowhere has the division between old and new media been more apparent than in sports journalism. The emergence of blogs like deadspin.com and a plethora of others devoted to more specific niches have left local and even national media scrambling to keep up.

It makes sense when you look at logistically. Most major sporting events are televised regionally or nationally and oftentimes the post game press conferences are televised as well. What qualifies a reporter from a newspaper to cover, report, and wax poetic about a game more than a fan with an internet connection?

Many people view the emergence of blogs as an opportunity for the common fan to voice their opinions and perspectives regarding athletics, no press pass required. In the current tumultuous media climate, where should a young journalist cast their lot?

Tom Keller is a sports reporter for the News & Record in Greensboro. He has followed the traditional route of entering the field of journalism. He began writing for his high school paper and then his college newspaper at Michigan State University. From there he was awarded a summer internship at the News & Record and later returned to the News & Record as its prep sports reporter.

Keller counts himself among the lucky journalists-particularly young journalists-with a job at a major newspaper.

"I am very fortunate, to come out of college at 22-years-old and get a job as a beat writer at a 100,000 circulation newspaper. A lot of things had to happen for that to come together."

Will Brinson, a recent graduate of UNCG, on the other hand has looked to non-traditional new media outlets to build his career in journalism. He writes for several websites about various topics but most notably for AOL's Fanhouse sports blogs. He covers everything from the NFL to golf, from Major League Baseball to tennis, from Fantasy sports to the NBA to college sports. He has also written at one point or another for talentedmrroto.com (a site about fantasy sports), NBA.com and mouthpiecesports.com. Links to his work have been posted on other well-known sites such as Sports Business Journal, the Wall Street Journal, Deadspin, CNNSI and ESPN the Magazine. Suffice it to say, many people have certainly read Brinson's work.

Brinson is positioned comfortably on the cutting side of "new media" in the new media (blogs and websites) vs. old media (newspapers and magazines) divide.

"I think that I'm probably at the elder end of the generational curve that no longer looks at papers and says, 'I always wanted to write there.'" says Brinson. "I didn't always want to write for a newspaper - if anything, when I was younger it was always wanting to write for ESPN.com or Yahoo.com about sports. Which isn't necessarily 'alternative media,' it's just sports information and news coverage on the Internet."

Brinson adds "The Internet wasn't invented to kill newspapers, Al Gore just recognized that it was faster, more fluid, cheaper and could serve the masses much faster. That's why he built it."

Keller realizes that this is a turbulent time to work at a newspaper. When Keller interned at the News & Record in 2006 there were eight sports reporters on staff. Now, including Keller, there are only three.

"It's a strange time for newspapers. In three years it has become a vastly different world, but the heart of what we do is not any different."

In his brief career as a blogger Brinson has covered some extraordinary events and people. For instance he got to ride with Dale Earnhardt Jr. for two laps around Lowes Motor Speedway. He's interviewed the likes of John Wooden, Dwayne Wade and Willis McGahee. He covered the Carolina Panthers-Arizona Cardinals playoff game last January and has worked with and alongside notable media members such as Fanhouse columnist Kevin Blackistone and ESPN College Basketball analyst Doug Gottlieb. He even met with John Daly at the Greensboro Hooters last year during the Wyndham just a few weeks before Daly's passing out incident at the Hooters in Winston-Salem.

He's also broken his share of stories that ended up becoming national news. In the winter of 2008 he pointed out to the world that in the waning minutes of the broadcast of Maryland's win at North Carolina in college basketball one anguished Tar Heel student can be heard telling Maryland's players to "go back to the ghetto." Recently Brinson brought it to the attention of the world that Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva was tweeting during halftime of a game.