As newspapers cut staff, university athletic coverage suffers

Mid-American Conference (colors denote divisions)

Staff declines in community newspapers have led to less coverage of athletic programs in the Mid-American Conference, Nicholas Piotrowicz reports for The Blade in Toledo.

"MAC schools rarely received national media attention, and some of the schools received little attention even from local media," Piotrowicz writes. "But as the years have gone on, the declines in media have only exacerbated the problem for MAC schools, most of which are in small and mid-sized markets that rely upon community journalism.
As those outlets began to struggle, the MAC started to turn into a news desert."

Consolidation of newspapers into regional entities has "almost always" led to less MAC coverage, he writes, quoting Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (and publisher of The Rural Blog): "Some stuff is going to get left behind, and unfortunately, coverage of the MAC is probably suffering because these papers see their truly local sports — high schools — as being more important than the colleges."

Here's Piotrowicz's scorecard: "In the past 18 months, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Athens Messenger, and Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune laid off full-time reporters covering the MAC. The Daily Chronicle in DeKalb, Ill., lost its Northern Illinois beat reporter, has not re-hired, and has furloughed additional staff."

Penny Abernathy, University of North Carolina professor and the leading researcher on news deserts, told Piotorwicz that ownership matters: "What we have found, given the consolidation in the industry, is there is less attachment to the community where the newspaper is located, especially if you are owned by a chain, particularly a large chain."