Idea

[Vince]

And the more I think of it, the more I'm certain it has to exist somewhere already...

But I got to thinking last night. I was in for a haircut, and it was pretty slow there. One stylist (whatever you want to call her), and one guy getting his haircut. I'm sitting there, waiting my turn (the only other guy in the store), and I pick up the Sports section of the LA Times and start reading it.

Now, as a college student, I don't read the paper much since I don't need the extra costs of a subscription (I already work over 35 hours a week and barely make rent and stuff). However, reading the different takes on the Kobe-Shaq incident, and stories about the LA Kings and Anaheim Ducks were pretty interesting, but I'd like to have gotten a bigger variety of opinions, and different teams to read about, as I'm not from LA and do not particularly like LA teams. I got to thinking...wouldn't it be great if you could get newspapers from all sorts of different places so you could get different local viewpoints? Now, I don't read much of the paper in general (something I've been meaning to change, but I just don't have time), but I will always read the sports section if I grab a paper. Here comes my idea - what about a daily 'publication' that just includes the sports page from a bunch of different papers nationally? All the sports pages from the LA Times, NY Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times (whatever it's called), etc, all in one place, delivered to your front door every day. I think that would be pretty popular, and not all that difficult to do.

What do you all think?

[bryce]

i'm no lawyer, but i gotta believe you'd run into some sort of copyright/distribution problem. the logistics behind assembling legal agreements with each distributor/newspaper would be mindboggling, i would think. maybe i'm wrong, though. wouldn't be the first time.

[vtbub]

It's a nice idea that has zero chance of happening.

First, most major market newspapers are in competition with each other. I am 200 miles away from both New York and Boston, but I can go to any store and buy the New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, along with USA Today and my local paper which is owned by USA Today.

Frankly I don't see NewsCorp, owner of the Post and Boston Herald, ever promoting Mike Lupica of the Daily News or Bob Ryan of the Globe (owned by the New York Times)

Also, I don't see any company that would give up circulation on their regional daily to farm out to a national paper.

There was a national sports daiy, called the "National". It suffered from the time shifting needed to get a paper printed and out the door. Early Evening games on the East Coast where rarely in the next day's editions and forget anything in the other three time zones.

There are web services that do what you suggest and my guess is that would be the most praticial soloution at this point, but with sportswriters on TV all the time, how much demand can there be for the point of view from wherever because it's already on TV?

[Leonidas]

I believe you are searching for something called the internet. Do a search for any major city and you will find their newspaper, which likely carries all their big columns online. I currently have the Washington Post, Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Fox News, etc. that I can read every day. Really amazing to see the different perspectives every day on the same stories.

I used to read LA Times this way but they went to subscriber service online. I refuse to pay for that which I can get free elsewhere.

[Buzzbee]

Originally posted by vtbub
It's a nice idea that has zero chance of happening.

First, most major market newspapers are in competition with each other. I am 200 miles away from both New York and Boston, but I can go to any store and buy the New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, along with USA Today and my local paper which is owned by USA Today.

Frankly I don't see NewsCorp, owner of the Post and Boston Herald, ever promoting Mike Lupica of the Daily News or Bob Ryan of the Globe (owned by the New York Times)

Also, I don't see any company that would give up circulation on their regional daily to farm out to a national paper.

There was a national sports daiy, called the "National". It suffered from the time shifting needed to get a paper printed and out the door. Early Evening games on the East Coast where rarely in the next day's editions and forget anything in the other three time zones.

There are web services that do what you suggest and my guess is that would be the most praticial soloution at this point, but with sportswriters on TV all the time, how much demand can there be for the point of view from wherever because it's already on TV?

To further expand on this, a print paper would have to many logistical issues to be viable in my opinion. However, as vtbub mentioned, the internet might offer a viable way to do this.

An example of where this is already happening comes from the NASCAR world. There is a guy named Jay Adamczyk who enjoyed NASCAR, but wasn't able to find information on various rumors that were circulating. He did his own research and over time began to collect a wide array of resources. He eventually compiled the stuff and put it on a website (Jayski website). His site now gets 150,000 hits a day and has everything most NASCAR fans would ever want to know and more.

A lot of the information on the site is links to various newspapers with articles relating to NASCAR. Even some NASCAR teams use the site to gather information. Quite honestly there is so much information there that I can't envision keeping up with it all.

Just wanted to provide an example of what I think Vince is talking about.

[MJ4H]

www.dailyearth.com

[Vince]

Buzzbee - that's pretty much what I'm talking about.

I understand the internet and all...but I don't know...I just get more of a sense of accomplishment when I read a newspaper article. Checking the internet somehow feels like taking a shortcut.

On top of that, I think the quality of articles in newspapers is sometimes, maybe even frequently, better than online articles. Who knows...just thought I'd see what you guys thought about it.