Future of Hoya Coverage at Washington Times

So to survive they are going to only focus on their "Right wing cult members" market?

That's actually not that bad of an idea. At least its a niche right?

Barker could be a great pickup for the WPost because he is also very experienced at covering college football and professional golf.

The bad news is that the Post will not allow him as much freedom to do all those extra Gtown writeups as the Times did. And the other bit of bad news is that the WPost, like all newspapers, isn't safe either.

I realize you are posting that partly in jest, but in actuality it has proven to be a highly effective and incredibly lucrative (if utterly disingenuous and cynical) business strategy as evidenced by Rush, Glenn, Anne, and the entire Fox "news" network. We can add Sarah to the list now as well. Quitting as Governor of Alaska with 18 months left in her term to strike while the iron's hot and pursue money making ventures like books, speaking tours and TV has shown that she is indeed a "media superstar" -- with as much substance, perspective and integrity as her aforementioned role models.

Although the Examiner still has Craig Stouffer on staff covering the Hoyas.

The Washington Examiner is mostly original content, probably less than 10% wire service, with several syndicated columnists that originate at the Examiner a la Politico.

For the last several weeks Macy's has started running ads and pushing coupons in the Examiner. I honestly can think of no other reason for a sane person picking up a hard copy of the WaPo. The Post is on its death bed unless some insane billionaire floods it with money to support an ideological agenda.

1. Great writers in the Metro section who provide news and investigative reporting about the DC area that NO ONE else provides.

2. Great writers who travel across the country to provide some of the best investigative reporting of our nation.

3. A strong corp of writers who actually pay attention to the international scene (one of the very last American newspapers to provide such a service) and are accordingly spread out across the globe.

4. Still easily the best overall sports reporting done for the DC area.

5. An editorial page that allows the views of both liberals and conservatives to express their opinions (the WTimes only allowed conservative viewpoints to be printed).

6. The comic strips...if you're in to that sort of thing.

Now if you're arguing that with the ability to get almost all of this content on-line for free its stupid to but the WPost well the that's a different argument altogether. I still but a hard copy of the newspapers (I have a subscription) and I have always felt that the newspapers should charge for their on-line content. But even if you disagree with that if one still reads Post articles on-line that is at least suggesting that the content is actually good in the first place.

I had a subscription to the WTimes as well until last year when the newspaper decided to cut back on money spent on deliveries. This meant firing all of its veteran paper delivery folks and hiring a bunch of low pay scab replacements. And this meant instead of the paper being thrown onto my porch each morning (the distance from my gate to my porch is about 25 to 30 feet), the paper was tossed onto the sidewalk OUTSIDE my gate two or three times a week. Sometimes it would be toss into the street directly in front of my home (which means it could be 12 feet from my freakin' gate). I called the WTimes and spoke with The Man In Charge about three times concerning this problem. Each time I was promised the issue would be addressed and taken care of. Each time nothing changed. So I canceled my subscription as did another neighbor. I would have thought a newspaper would have been doing all it could to keep subscribers but those jokers obviously didn't care.

Might be old school, but I'd be lost w/o my Sunday WaPost. I love it, man.

Bummer about newspapers in general, but specifically if we lose Barker's reporting on the Hoyas. At least we'll always have HoyaTalk

SO where are all the bloggers gonna go when there's no more newspaper reporters and stories to mooch/comment from?

Yes, it is old school. I've posted a link on the front page to audited newspaper numbers ending 9/30/09 and the numbers are grim everywhere. The Times now has fewer Sunday readers than the Fredericksburg News-Star.



The Politico.com model shows that original reporting can be done outside the print medium. Other sites such as MinnPost and the Texas Tribune are well on their way, too. Good for political news, not good for sports.

An offer to what? A trip to the welfare line? (btw I know you were joking).

Even if those two newspapers could magically come up with enough money to cover Barker's beat of Gtown hoops what would he do the other eight months of the year to earn a paycheck from them? He covered multiple major sports for the WTimes year round.