Newspaper coverage of harness racing

[trackrat]

Keith, I noticed in the Plain Dealer sports section the other day, that Darcy Egan mentioned that Striking Genius had won the featured trot on Monday night at 97-1 odds. Obviously, he was talking about Eagle Creek Patrol at those odds, in an entirely different race. As we know, the Plain Dealer coverage of horse racing is virtually non-existent. From reading the PD, one would hardly know that the Kentucky Derby is this weekend, never mind who is racing. Years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in the Frederick, Maryland area and read the Baltimore and Washington papers regularly and neither one of them covered racing either.

Has the interest in racing, in general, deteriorated that much that newspapers no longer see the demand to cover the sport, or is it a business decision because of the cost of reporters, column space, etc? With internet reporting and track websites, have those options replaced newspapers as the primary source of racing news? In this one newspaper town, I personally do not see horse racing ever returning to the sports page.

In the unlikely event that Ohio will ever have slots or casino gambling to supplement the race track purses, would enhanced purses (and better quality horses) generate enough buzz for newspaper coverage?

Interested in your thoughts. I am surprised no one else commented on Darcy Egan's mistake.

[thegiss]

Darcy was on deadline and misread my press release, based on a headline. The PD has made a business decision to cut coverage-- you may recall they eliminate dentries and results a while back, but an uproar from fans amd subscribers got them reinstated.

When Bob Roberts took his buyout, Darcy returned to the racing beat. He covered this beat in the late seventies, too and is a former Northfield PR Director, too. He is not a s big a t-bred guy as Roberts, so the Derby coverage hasn't been as extensive as when Bob was there.

The PD has cut staff and the size of its sports section dratsically in recent years, with an expanded emphasis on HS sports. Their feeling is that racing info is available through enough other sources (web, etc) that extensive coverage isn't needed. I pointed out that based on that model, they should stop covering the Indians, since they are also available on the web and every game is broadcast, eithe ron radio, TV or both. They kind of hemmed and hawed when I brough that up. We just keep plugging away, pitching story ideas and hoping they will give us som egood stuff.
We have had Chuck Yarborough do a piece on being a groom; John Campanellu doing a piece on taking a date to Northfield and Bill Lubinger following a horseman to the Delaware sale in the last couple years, as well as the fashion piece on boots which was shot here.
We had been fetaured abotu twelve times in Friday magazine in the last year, also,.

[sulkyhaven]

I live in Baltimore and, frankly, horseracing has become a second class sport in this area. One reason that is always given is that purses have dropped because the neighboring states have slots and those tracks can attract better trainers and horses with higher purses. But, the local media (Baltimore Sun) does not cover the sport unless, of course, it's Preakness week. Standardbred racing is none existent in the paper though the only track in the area is Rosecroft and that's basically in the Washington D.C. area. (Washington Post doesn't cover either)