Kathlyn Clore

I watched several top-notch golfers implode today, beaten up by unyielding greens and cliffside fairways at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

But while watching the final round of this major championship, as well as during the hours I spent at Pebble Beach helping with local newspaper coverage of the U.S. Open, I saw an unspoken storyline playing out.

And that’s the continued self-destruction of traditional media outlets.

Where to begin….

At home during today’s final round, I tuned into NBC’s coverage while keeping an eye on Twitter. I monitored the hashtags #usopen and #pebblebeach, as well as the commentary of a few sportswriters I follow via my own account. All afternoon, Twitterers bemoaned the wonky weird commentary of Johnny Miller, a former PGA great who is now synonymous with odd golf announcing. An AP writer picked up on one especially bizzare comment:

Did anyone at NBC respond to this and many other Tweets about the announcers’ odd deliveries? Did the broadcasters respond?

Of course not. Would it have been difficult to tune in to what their viewers were saying? No. Would it have been difficult to plan ahead and perhaps solicit and take questions from folks at home via Twitter? No.

Lest we get too down on the TV boys, a look at newspapers.

All week at the media tent, I felt somewhat in awe of the big-name newspaper guys. Most are old enough to be my dad (I say “dad” because there were something like 10 women in the media tent) and they work at big-brand papers: The Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, The New York Times. Heady stuff.

Mind-boggling, though, is that they’re all sitting next to each other, each writing slightly different versions of the same stories without realizing that portals like Google, Yahoo and MSNBC are aggregating all their work in the same place anyway. When are journalists going to realize that the only “on ramp” to their work isn’t their brand’s website or printed product?

I have no idea why they all didn’t talk to each other - especially newspapers who share owners - to determine who is writing what, and how not to overlap.

Oh yeah. And extra weird is that the paper dudes sit right next to the dudes from AP - who, by the way, work for a wire service nearly every other newspaper represented at the U.S. Open pays to provide copy.

And they’re all.writing.the.same.thing.

The night before the final round, nearly every outlet I named above carried stories on the following topics:

- Tiger Woods’ big jump up the leaderboard and his quest for a comeback

- Phil Mickelson’s implosion in Saturday’s round

- Dustin Johnson’s lead; the fact that he’s a two-time winner at the PGA Tour’s annual stop in Monterey

- The little-known Europeans in the hunt: McDowell and Havret

- Tom Watson playing all five U.S. Opens at Pebble Beach

….and aside from various notebook items, that about covers it. So, what’s the problem here?

Think Google.

Here’s the Google News page for Sports, as seen about two hours after Graeme McDowell laid up for par on 18 to become the first European in 40 years to win a U.S. Open:

You can see that the national papers trump regional content providers, which is somewhat of a shame in this case. Consider the case of Dustin Johnson, who had a horrible Sunday round after playing well all week and owning the lead going into the final round. He’s won the past two AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am tournaments; the regional media are quite familiar with him and prepared to write good stories about him. He comes from South Carolina; the reporters from that state probably also have a lot of local knowledge on him.

But because regional newspapers - like the Monterey County Herald and San Jose Mercury News - are typically part of newspaper chains whose owners reside states away, they’re not able to quickly adopt to new media … and consequently don’t do things that would bump them up in Google rankings.

For example, neither the Herald nor the Mercury News have a policy of including many (if any) outgoing links. Further, their archive systems are terrible; most stories expire in two weeks. so it’s not really worth linking back to them. This complete lack of participation in linking culture seriously hurts them when it comes to helping their copy stand out on Google or on Yahoo homepages.

Also, it’s just kind of sad that sports writers from different mediums don’t link to each other - especially when many are friends (as I saw this week). Why don’t newspaper and magazine writers link to each other, for example? Trust me, the staff writers for Golf World and Golf Digest and the rest were all online writing the same storylines as everybody else, but their writers will usually have additional time to write even longer features on the tournament. Wouldn’t it be nice if, via linking culture, newspapers like the Monterey Herald could make their readers aware of a golf magazine writer’s blog - where he will likely post his longer and more insightful or golf-specialized posts - and for the magazine writer to link back to the paper (because some of his readers could benefit from the quick-hit stuff that newspapers live off of?).

Which door are you going to walk through today?

Me, I’m swinging for the fence.

So love New Yorker cartoons in the fall.

There is no greater uniting experience for the people who grew up in Chicago from 1984-1999 than the Chicago Bulls that Michael Jordan led to double sets of three-peat NBA championships.

Which is why I’m thrilled to see the Chicago Tribune’s cool layout for its special section about Jordan’s career to mark his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

In the past 30 years, Jordan probably did more to inspire the people of the city of Chicago than anyone else. I hope he’ll be involved in a big way when the Windy City gets the Olympics in 2016.

Being a Bulls fan was a huge part of my experience being a young girl growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. My family lived in Aurora, Illinois, during the championship era. Every night my mom would allow it, I’d lay with my sister and brother on the carpet in front of our television to watch the Bulls play. School nights were tricky: We’d either be persuading our parents to let us stay up to watch overtimes or “make sure they win” when things were going particularly well for the Bullies.

Our young family would, come playoff time in June, have cookouts with other young families and all watch the game together.

Arriving in time to watch Ray Clay do the starting lineup was always very important. Then, during halftime me and the rest of the kids there, usually all girls, would go play soccer in the backyard or sometimes shoot hoops on the driveway.

When the Bulls won, which they always did, everyone outside would be honking their horns and cheering.

Watching the Bulls motivated me and my siblings to try a lot of sports. My dad coached. He was, like MJ’s dad, really involved. We had a lot of sports talks when I was growing up, many of them in the car going to or from games. My mom was involved, too, of course. She watched every Bulls game we did and was always the first person we wanted to tell about how a game of our own had gone. She and I together with my sister Maggie even coached my younger sister Jackie’s recreational soccer team.

Soccer turned out to be the one all of us played and loved most, but we each tried basketball, too, and swimming. As such, the Barcelona Olympics, where the U.S. women’s swim team and the U.S.A Men’s Basketball team (The Dream Team) did well, were really important. Again, I watched it all laying on the beige carpet of my parent’s house on Leyland Lane.

Other family members, like my great grandfather Poppy, were always around for times we spent watching sports. For his 80th (I think?) birthday, my three uncles (I think?) somehow scored tickets to take our whole family to the newly redone United Center for a game. I got to sit with my great grandfather in the mezzanine, which is something I will remember for always.

I will also always remember the one time I got to attend a game at the Old Chicago Stadium, which was a madhouse. I was very young, in elementary school. My mom and I went with my Aunt Nancy, whose boss had season tickets but couldn’t attend that game. Our seats were very high up and I remember being a bit freaked when all the lights went out for the starting lineup.

I’ll also always remember a school assembly at Waubonsie Valley High School that my class attended to hear John Paxon speak. This was after he’d shot the winning shot to win the 1993 championship.

Love of sports and clean competitiveness (OK, and some trash talking, and some appreciation of weirdos like Denis Rodman) has helped myself and my siblings learn to work hard but enjoy life and to be young adults taking pride in supporting our own selves.

Whenever it was basketball season but not game night, my dad would come home from work and, over his dinner and the newspaper, tell me what everyone in Chicago was saying about the Bulls. I remember asking him often if the upcoming team was good or had any good guys.

Sometimes I even tried to read the sports section myself. It always impressed me that there was a girl writing about the Bulls sometimes, Melissa Issacson.

My whole family knew not only all the Bulls players and coaches, but also all the media personalities around the team: Amahd Rashad, Johnny-Red Kerr, Tim Doerr. In fact, we sort of hated it when the Bulls were playing out of of town and we had to suffer through other media personalities.

We’d always saved, too, the commemorative newspaper sections about the championships.

Later in the summer, my sister and I would watch the celebration rallies at Grant Park. By then we’d have coerced our parents into buying us celebratory T-shirts to mark the Bulls’ win. Usually they were so huge that half the time we wore them to sleep in. We always wanted our mom to take us to the rally, but she always said it would be too many people and that we were too little for that.

Now, as an adult, I live in California, far away from Chicago (but close enough to get some games on TV).

Living in Europe for a while gave me a greater appreciation of how world-famous Jordan made our city (and for how difficult it is to support them from afar - but people do! I met a Frenchman around my age who knew as much, if not more, as I did about the Jordan-era Bulls).

Living in South Carolina for a few years prior to moving overseas also gave me a small sense of appreciation for the issues Jordan’s family likely faced when he was a young man in North Carolina. All he has achieved is made more remarkable by considering where he comes from, I think.

I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever have the chance to live in or near Chicago again. Sometimes I think about people telling me that Chicago is such a competitive city that to work there, you have to build up your career away from the city and then come back to find a job.

The last time I was back, though, my dad took me, my sister and brother to a Bulls game. We got to watch Derrick Rose, who looks like a really promising homegrown Chicago ballplayer.

Digital skills have become de rigeur, but let me take a minute to remember and pay tribute to that most old-fashioned reporter’s tool: Curiosity.

Mine took me to the California Rodeo Salinas last week for a bit of freelance reporting. I’d never been to a rodeo before, but enjoyed my first chance to check it out. Nothing too serious; my contribution to the Monterey County Herald’s coverage included a preview, profile of a local cowboy and - most hilariously - a feature on the world of rodeo queens.

Side question: Is it effective for reporters be sent to cover events they’ve not previously been exposed to for non-niche publications like newspapers? Or should newspapers consistently recruit experts to contribute to reporting - not just as sources but as content creators? I debated this with my sister, who is training to run her first marathon, last week. She thinks “no journalist can understand or convey accurately” what she’s going through in her training. Having written about several marathoners but not run longer than a 10k, I disagreed.

Thoughts?

A few notes about my first rodeo round-ups:

1. Rodeos can be fun, especially once you learn to wear proper footwear. I’m a city girl for sure - a fact given away the flip-flop sandals I wore on my first excursion to the Salinas Sports Complex - but walking through the dirt on the track to see the bulls and cowboys up close was a sensory experience anyway. The “Old West” is certainly still alive in a lot of American (and Australian and Brazillian) hearts, minds and faces: Good lord, the facial hair! Mustaches abounded, as did Wranglers, boots (spurs included) and hats.

2. Not even cowboys have missed the Web 2.0 revolution. The California Rodeo Salinas may be a 100-year-old tradition, but damn it, they sho’ can Tweet. And don’t cha worry yo’ pretty lil’ head, missy: they’re a-gittin’ their 8 seconds of glory on Facebook and MySpace, too.

3. Rodeo queens are more interesting and wholesome than beauty queens. (I did my best Google Searching to make sure of it, let me tell ya).And rodeo girls can at least ride horses and identify “pieces of tack” while onstage. I don’t see Carrie Prejean being able to do such a pretty wave while on horseback. Plus, I doubt the Miss Rodeo California committee buys its queen a new set of fake boobs.

Story idea for next year: Who provides health insurance for these bullridin’ yahoos?

In somewhat related news, my director at the EJC yesterday sent this quote about sportswriting:

Quote from Michael Connelly / The Scarecrow: “They were good writers like most sport reporters have to be…”

I just read through this article, which I found via IFRA.

I think Steve Rubel’s example of a multi-tasking reporter covering Spring Training is a good one. But I’d take issue with three things:

1. The dude portrayed here is indeed a newspaper reporter already. So he’s got the credentials to get him the access he needs to do all these things with Cover It Live, etc. So this is still a case of the newspaper coming first, before the new media stuff. But, OK, this post is surely titled “The newspaper reporter of the future…”

And right there, we run into the problem that newspapers won’t always look as they do today (or at least, how they looked yesterday). So which body will be employing the guy in this post? Could he do what he’s doing if he did not work for an established media outlet? Having covered sports myself, I say no. He would not have the access.

This is where I think English-speaking (esp. Americans) media people need to find a better word than “Newspapers”. Let’s stop using a word that contains the medium of paper. I think most other languages avoid this. “Periodista”, for example, would be the Spanish word for a female journalist. The word contains the idea of a periodical, but not newsprint.

If we use that word, we’d be enabled to talk about this guy working for a periodical without him working for a newspaper. Because he might not always work for a newspaper, but he will likely always work for a periodical. That’s where he’ll get access.

I think these nuances are important because we need a change in mentality, a shift away from reliance upon newspapers for access and credibility.

1A. I think it’s rather unfortunate reporters everywhere have gotten co-opted into doing all these extra jobs, acquiring all these extra skills, but don’t see their pay or job security rise. But that’s the reality.

2. I take issue with the last sentance of this post:

“What Abraham is doing represents not only the future of journalism but also what PR professionals themselves need to do to build connections in the years ahead.”

This sentance prompts the question: “What’s the difference then, between the future journalist and the future PR person?” This line is going to become extremely blurred, I think, because both parties are going to be in the business of building audiences. So how will the public know who is the journalist and who is the PR person?