Local Media Coverage

[baldereagle]

After watching Eagles destroy Giants last night in front of a full VMA and Devin achieve something never done before in the BBL, I thought I'd buy a Newcastle Journal today to read how our local media reported it.

Nine pages of sport including a whole column for the Kelso Point to Point racing, but NOTHING about basketball.  This isn't the first time our local media has shunned us - I wonder if Newcastle is alone in this or do other teams get ignored ?

[eagles18000]

all about deadlines.

the extra length of the games has pushed them past the local morning press deadline for coverage. Nothing more nothing lesss

[baldeagle]

Mar 10, 2024 8:34:36 GMT eagles18000 said:

all about deadlines.

the extra length of the games has pushed them past the local morning press deadline for coverage. Nothing more nothing lesss

And no local paper employs/ engages anyone to cover crappy minority sports like basketball, as opposed to the Kelso point-to-point and the 8 pages about the footy. It’s about priorities as well as deadlines.

[spacejammer]

I understand the frustration but it's not exactly unexpected.
I have seen the local media share a brief segment on the Eagles ENBL games before the match and the recent Team GB match against Holland.

But have us destroy a team that is bottom of the table and we were expected to win anyway doesn't suprise me that we got no coverage.
If we make the ENBL Final 4 or the playoffs then we would get some press coverage.

But despite the rise in production and basketball said to be the 2nd most popular sport.
Unfortunately it's unlikely to get much in terms of local media coverage at this current time.
Although I hope this does eventually change.

[baldeagle]

Mar 10, 2024 9:50:48 GMT spacejammer said:

I understand the frustration but it's not exactly unexpected.
I have seen the local media share a brief segment on the Eagles ENBL games before the match and the recent Team GB match against Holland.

But have us destroy a team that is bottom of the table and we were expected to win anyway doesn't suprise me that we got no coverage.
If we make the ENBL Final 4 or the playoffs then we would get some press coverage.

But despite the rise in production and basketball said to be the 2nd most popular sport.
Unfortunately it's unlikely to get much in terms of local media coverage at this current time.
Although I hope this does eventually change.

To be fair, recent local BBC/ ITV news coverage in Newcastle has been pretty good, despite complete lack of any national BBC interest. But printed press coverage is a poor imitation of what it used to be, due mainly to the fact that they have very few sports desk staff whose original content is almost all football.

[milehigh]

Local newspapers are a dieing industry, with minute budgets for journalism, and none for staff overtime to cover minority sports.

The point to point article was probably supplied by the event organisers, likewise a lot oof the football coverage would have been supplied by the clubs.

Even in the BBL, most of the coverage Leicester riders get is from information supplied by the club, who have developed relationships with the local media over many years.

[dandayr]

Mar 10, 2024 9:59:40 GMT milehigh said:

Local newspapers are a dieing industry, with minute budgets for journalism, and none for staff overtime to cover minority sports.

The point to point article was probably supplied by the event organisers, likewise a lot oof the football coverage would have been supplied by the clubs.

Even in the BBL, most of the coverage Leicester riders get is from information supplied by the club, who have developed relationships with the local media over many years.

I think you've hit the nil on the head - for local media coverage in the written press (physical paper or their online socials) so much of the content is driven by what others provide to them, even I believe at the pro level of minority sports like ours. A lot of stories from what are seen as the bigger sports (football, rugby, cricket) I believe are also club driven outputs and for those it nowadays seems to be match reports, transfer rumours and 'scandals' the papers do themselves and the rest are club outputs shared to the media.

We, an amateur club, used to have an article in one of our local weekly papers every week (it had at least 6 pages for sport) and in the other one it would be maybe once a month (had 3 pages for sport). 99% of the articles were written by the club and submitted with pictures. A couple of exceptions were where basketballscotland or nationallottery/sportscotland or the sportscouncil ran a press release to do with international caps for our players or awards made. In all the years I think the papers maybe ran 2 features (one on the club, one on a long servant) where the journalist did the report and they sent a photographer to an event or to and not the club doing it.

Nowadays though we dont have the same coverage - both have shrunk their number of pages covering sport and nowadays you basically get a paragraph or two and rarely use of a picture. So that along with the publicity drove our youth waiting list to very high numbers meant the time it took for a volunteer to do the articles was no longer a good use of time and we rarely submit a press release these days.

[johnjack]

It surprises me you don’t see more on BBC Basketball. How difficult could it actually be? I am sure you could even get a fan who would be willing to do it for free at each game. It’s good to see the Lions get a mention tho. Is the Lions the stench that we have to put up with to gain more coverage overall. Women’s football only gets covered due to its association with men’s football and look at the growth and funding they now get.

[dexter]

Mar 10, 2024 14:12:00 GMT johnjack said:

It surprises me you don’t see more on BBC Basketball. How difficult could it actually be? I am sure you could even get a fan who would be willing to do it for free at each game. It’s good to see the Lions get a mention tho. Is the Lions the stench that we have to put up with to gain more coverage overall. Women’s football only gets covered due to its association with men’s football and look at the growth and funding they now get.

Part of the problem is basketball isn't really concentrated to any particular region. In Lancashire and Yorkshire rugby league gets more local coverage. In Wales rugby union gets more coverage. There isn't anywhere that basketball is big enough to get that kind of coverage.