Six years of Nieman Lab predictions

Also thoughts on Shohei Ohtani and Sean McDermott

This week, the Nieman Lab published my prediction for the coming year in sports journalism. 

I wrote about the combination of sports journalism and sports gambling, and how I think that unless major sports media networks and professional organizations start coming up with specific guidelines about journalists gambling, this space is ripe for a big scandal. 

Think insider trading. Think the Shams-Scoot Henderson story, only one that doesn’t strangely disappear from the conversation after like three days. There’s just too much money, too many intertwined alliances between news organizations and sports books. This is like pre-World War I Europe, and I think things are about to blow.¹

The same way Donald Trump’s candidacy is a test for the norms and practices of American political journalists, legalized sports gambling is a test for the norms and practices of sports journalists.

This is the sixth year I’ve written for the Nieman Lab’s prediction series, and every year it’s one of my favorite things to write. I thought it’d be interesting to see how accurate I’ve been with these essays. So with that in mind, let’s look back at my previous predictions:

2022

The prediction: Rebuilding the news bundle

You’re seeing the rise of bundles in entertainment and the streaming space. Like a lot of you, I subscribe to Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ for one combined price, and my HBO Max subscription is part of my AT&T wireless plan. These bundles are helping solve the subscription-pocalypse … In 2023, I think we’ll start seeing similar bundles in the news industry.

The verdict: This one, not so much. The closest thing remains getting The Athletic when you subscribe to The New York Times, but since The Athletic is now acting as the Times’ sports section, it feels less like a bundle and more straight-up horizontal integration. But at the local or regional level, this still isn’t happening. Not sure why.

2021

The prediction: You’ll be able to buy a newspaper day pass

2022 is the year that publishers can, will, and should start offering daily passes to read articles.

The verdict: File this under “if this was truly viable, someone would have made it work by now.” I still think it’s a good idea. But the fact is, the market for daily news passes (or any other kind of micropayment) is probably too small tone worth it. And plus, if I can get two months of the Philadelphia Inquirer for 99 cents (like I am through football season), why would I spend the same for one day?

2020

The prediction: The year sports journalism changes for good

When you talk to sports reporters today, there’s a real fear that their limited access to players and coaches in 2020 will continue in the post-COVID world.

The verdict: Thankfully, this one turned out to be wrong. Access in pro and elite college sports is still nowhere near where sports journalists would like it to be. But it has gone back to pre-pandemic levels. Zoom press conferences are, for the most part, a thing of the past. Credit to the writers associations for all major sports, for making this a priority and keeping locker rooms open for as many journalists as possible. 

2019

The prediction: The end of “stick to sports”

“Stick to sports” is embedded in the economic DNA of sports media …  In today’s economically perilous time for media, the idea of avoiding topics that could alienate half of your audience is alluring. And that’s where sports journalists will find their role: They need to resist the call. The era of “stick to sports” is over

The verdict: This one … huh. So this one is interesting. It’s very much of a time and place. It came during the heart of the Trump presidency, just months after Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, heading into the 2020 election. But 2020 was also a year that sports journalism couldn’t stick to sports, because the pandemic took sports away for the longest time. It was also the year of George Floyd and the second Civil Rights movement. So while now, near the end of 2023, sports journalism seems as apolitical and sports focused as ever, in 2020, it did rise to the challenge.  

2018

The prediction: The Subscription-Pocalypse is about to hit

You can’t expect people to subscribe to their local paper (which is vital to democracy, we tell them) AND The New York Times and the Washington Post (because Democracy Dies in the Dark) AND Netflix AND Hulu AND HBO Go AND The Athletic AND ESPN Plus AND their favorite podcast on Patreon AND …

The verdict: I believe I had that. Of all my predictions, this is the one I’m most proud of. It’s the piece of thinking I’m most proud of, because it feels very ahead of the curve. This is something that streaming services and subscription sites are dealing with every day. Prices are going up, the number of services and sites keep growing (Substack wasn’t a thing when I wrote this), and audience members still have finite financial resources. I do think we are living in an extended subscription-pocalypse. 

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Shohei, don’t tell

Get the name of the dog. 

Generations of journalism professors like me have preached this to students, to the point where it has become cliche. It’s the quintessential example of getting details in a feature story.

Unless you’re writing a feature on Shohei Ohtani. 

The superstar was famously reticent about telling the media the name of his dog this past offseason, the way he kept his free agent meetings quiet, much to the consternation of many members of the baseball media. 

I’m not a big baseball guy, so I followed the Ohtani free agency with the passing interest of a casual sports fan. But things blew up last week on the journalism angle of this story.

Let’s start with Ohtani’s privacy. From Buster Olney, whose column on this was the lead story on ESPN.com last week: 

And Ohtani's reflex always has seemed to be to bear as little media and fan responsibility as possible, as was clear in his years in Anaheim. But the biggest stars in sports -- Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Patrick Mahomes et al -- understood that by speaking with the media, they are speaking to the patrons of their sport: the fans -- the paying customers.

Ohtani has not yet embraced that opportunity. And as he nears his decision in the midst of an imposed information blackout, he has missed a chance to serve the game he loves.

Two thoughts on this: 

1. It’s not Ohtani’s job to serve the game, nor is it to serve the media. In fact, it’s not the media’s job to serve the game itself. It’s the media’s job to report on the game — the good, the bad, the indifferent.

2. The idea that by speaking to the media, players are speaking to the fans reflects the traditional mindset of sports journalism. But it’s the mindset of the Mass Media age, the age of scarcity, where the only outlets available to fans were newspapers, radio and TV. In the age of abundance we have been in for 20 years, teams and players do not need news media to speak to their fans anymore. 

Now to the scoop, and the mess that reporting brought about. 

I do think people care who breaks news. That’s why Woj and Shams and Jeff Passan and Adam Schefter all have such huge followings. No, the Scoop Scoreboard doesn’t hold the same cache as it did in the past. But it did hold that cache in the past, which is why it still matters a bit today.

If you wanted to advance in your career, breaking news mattered. Breaking stories mattered. Anyone who tries to tell you they didn’t never tried to get ahead in the journalism industry. Scoops were the currency of the realm. They mattered to editors, because they showed what kind of journalist you were. 

In 2001, Steve Wilstein wrote the AP Sports Writing Handbook, which a generation of sports writing classes (including my own) have used as a textbook.  

The second chapter is about beat reporting. Some quotes from that chapter:

“Beat reporters live to break news. A good writer who covers a team knows every trade, every move, and the dollar amount of every deal — before it happens.”

“‘Part of our standards are to never get beat on a story’ Dayton Daily News sports editor Dean Rock says.”

“The beat writer breaks the story that sets everyone in motion,” said Michael Wilbon. 

These are attitudes that are deeply ingrained in the DNA of sports journalism. These role conceptions are real and strong and don’t go away just because the internet sped up the news cycle. 

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About Tyler Dunne and Sean McDermott

So in Western New York, the big sports media story this week was Tyler Dunne’s three-part epic feature on Bills coach Sean McDermott. 

If you’re not a Go Long subscriber or only casually follow the Bills, you probably know about this due to the 9/11 pep talk gone wrong. But this was an in-depth, incredibly reported piece looking at the Bills beleaguered coach (who was beleaguered long before this series dropped) and how he may be holding the team back. 

Look, if you know me, you know my biases here. Tyler’s been a friend of mine since the early 2000s. He was one of my interns at the Olean Times Herald, a student of mine at Syracuse, a frequent guest speaker to my classes and on my podcast. Go Long was the first Substack I paid for, and it’s the easiest money I spend every month. He doesn’t need me to fight his battles or defend him. 

But one journalistic note I want to make. From the top of Tyler’s first story: 

One quick reporting note because I always want to be upfront with our readers. While Go Long is based in Western New York, the Bills are one of the few teams that have chosen to deny us credentials and, hey, that’s fine. That’s their prerogative. We were told a while back to grab quotes from press conferences online for stories. Of course, that’s a disservice to you. So, in the interest of covering this team to the best of our ability, we’ve brought you the “Isaiah McKenzie Show,” connected with many Bills players independently for longform profiles and, now, it’s time to sift through the rubble to figure out why everything’s going south.

A lot of detractors latched on to this as proof that Tyler had a grudge with McDermott. But I see it as smart journalism. 

Part of this gig is transparency. It’s being upfront with your readers, let them know as much as they should know about the reporting process, about what you as a reporter bring to a story. 

People are not objective, so we should not expect journalists to be. We should expect fairness, accuracy and transparency. 

Tyler could have not written this paragraph, but then he’s hiding something from his readers. And that plants a seed of doubt. By being up front, he owns it. And the story, all 20,000 words, is fair and accurate. 

That’s all that needs to be said. 

1. Which means that yes, Shams was this close to being the Gavrilo Princip of this particular space.