This might have been covered ad nauseum somewhere else, but one more idignity for the Mets- The New York Times doesn’t seem to be sending a writer to cover the team on this road trip.  They are simply buying the game story from the Associated Press.  Now, that really isn’t surprising, since the Times isn’t really known for its sports section, despite it actually being very good.  But, it is truly a sign of both the Mets sad state of affairs and the state of newspapers that the Times chose to save the money from travel just buy the piece.

Earlier this month, Hall of Fame writer Hal McCoy was told by the Dayton Daily News that the paper would no longer pay for a writer to travel with the Reds on the road.  They too will buy the AP stories for those games.

What does that mean?  Well, newspapers are obsolete.  First, they haven’t realized that each of their writers is a National writer and rewarded them for how well they spread the readership of the paper to new places. Second, they haven’t figured out that the advertising on the web is more valuable than that in the paper, especially if certain writers are expanding their reach past the metro area.

But what it means to a baseball team ( to any team) is that fans are getting their info elsewhere…. and its not just ESPN.  Newspapers were given access to teams in order to drum up excitement for the team.  If that medium goes away then who is getting fans information and drumming up that excitement?  The guy sitting in his basement who has no more information that the person reading it.

All sports, but MLB teams who play a game virtually every day for 6 months absolutely have to come up with a way to disseminate correct information. ESPN, though impartial, really does have an east coast bias because that is where the passionate fans are.  So each team must begin to rely on local outlets to get information out- and than means letting local bloggers in.

I know its scary.

Perhaps, MLB could set up a vetting process to give credentials.  Perhaps they could create a one day seminar or require us to have a statement of standards on our site which we adhere to. I don’t know what it will take to make some of the old school PR guys comfortable letting folks without a newspaper brand behind them into the press box, or worse the clubhouse.  But MLB and each individual team needs to figure it out, and fast.

I’m not bothering reading a game story written by the Associate Press.  It has no nuance.  I know what happened in the game because of Sportscenter, I need that nuance.  I will look to the local bloggers for that now.  I mean no offense to the AP, its just that they go to so many outlets the story has to be pretty generic.  Time is at a premium, I don’t have time to read generic.

Very soon we will be planning for 2010- the last year of this decade.  Its time now to step into the 21st century.  Bloggers aren’t going away, and as newspapers continue to decline, they might be MLBs only hope.