I will do a summary of our learnings and experiences from Media Row later this week, but first some thoughts on curious learning and the dangers of not doing so.
There is so much back and forth about Bad Bunny and the halftime show and on and on. I got to chime in here before the game as well.
Of all the back and forth, I thought this summed up the best, from a conservative host in sports Emily Austin via Politico (which also had a solid summary)
In a culture addicted to outrage, people are desperate to tear each other apart. Bad Bunny had the biggest stage in the world and could’ve made it political.
He didn’t. He chose unity & love.
Most of the criticism I’ve seen isn’t even about the music — it’s about his ethnicity. That’s weak.
Music and sports are supposed to bring us together.
You can celebrate different backgrounds and still love this country. That’s exactly what this Super Bowl performance did ❤️🇺🇸
Facts.
The fastest growing demo in America is Hispanic. While it is hard to define because cultures are different…Mexican is different from Puerto Rican from Dominican from Spanish…the bottom line is it is a culture that is such a key part of the immigrant experience, and whether people are Spanish first or English first, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are all American first and if “they” don’t look like us or sound like “us” maybe we should be learning a little bit more.
Second, you didn’t have to watch the show. You could have gone elsewhere, you could have gone and done something else. Maybe if you watched you got a little uncomfortable. That’s a good thing. Maybe you learned a little. Maybe you didn’t like it at all. Maybe it wasn’t for your demo. Maybe you should look around and see who enjoyed it. Maybe you could have learned a bit more. Maybe you should be open to learning.
Third. If you stepped back from saying “no” first and used those 15 minutes to be curious and learn, you would have seen not divisive language, you would have seen unity. Isn’t that what we need?
Fourth. By just continuing to talk about the event…you have helped achieve the goal. Talk, think, debate. Opinions are what they are. But by even engaging you helped with a win for what this was. Not a football or a political or a sports moment, but a pop culture moment.
That was what made it Super.
On to another topic I have thought about all week, the demise of the Washington Post “sports” section for now (as the paper’s current owner, prepares to probably buy the Seattle Seahawks).
There were several pieces written last week that were thoughtful and deeply personal about the timing, the actions and the issues (Bryan Curtis had one of the best here, as did Sally Jenkins), but again, as a curious learner I set out to ask more and not opine over the loss, but to try and see what this tells us and what lies ahead as next.
First, in George Solomon’s piece in Sports Business Journal he talked about how the Post was a “supermarket for ideas and leadership,” with politics and news being tantamount, even though live sports and events drove news, interest and debate.
The problem with being a supermarket these days, as another colleague pointed out, is that we…especially those under 40…rarely shop in “supermarkets” these days, we shop in specialty stores for things that we as a community follow. Now will that be an answer to those who have a deep interest in sports in the DMV…to create a platform that is large enough to drive dollars and deep enough to tell stories that will be stand alone. Longtime DC businessman and sports entrepreneur Mark Ein indicated on his social platforms to “stay tuned” last week, & you can’t believe that Monumental Sports is not thinking about a multimedia alternative that is financially viable to fill the gap now created, but there is no clear answer for what was at this point.
When the news cascaded around Media Row last week, I sought out certain people for answers and thoughts. One group literally right in front of us were 14 colleges who had set up camp for the week, and always being interested in what younger people think since it is often different from the over 35 crowd, I asked them about “the news of the Post.” It was rather simple…what did you think, was The Washington Post a “go to” source for you, and where do you get your news.
Keep in mind this was a core group of probably 50 or 60 students who were deeply engaged in the business of media going forward as careers from some of the most established programs in the country…Ithaca and Syracuse, Northwestern and Fordham, Penn State and UCLA. The results? While a few were concerned about the loss of jobs and the credibility of what will happen going forward, none really mentioned The Post as a source they went to, or that they had even thought of the Post recently when they thought of the best of the best (some did mention The NY Times, fully realizing that for sports, The Athletic had now become The Times). None of the 30 or so young people had actually picked up a hard copy of a newspaper in five years (I gave some of the Northwestern students a copy of the Boston Globe to go through), and when asked about where they got their news, a majority mentioned mediums…TikTok, X, Instagram…vs actual media. When I asked all of them who they “trust” for news, they mentioned largely their family and two or three friends, which was both insightful and refreshing; media and medium do not bind confidence, we tend to believe the personal relationships we have much more.
Back to The Post. When I asked a series of more senior journalists on site if the issue with The Post going away was generational (The Ringer piece touched on the fact that this is NOT just nostalgic and generational it was an undermining of the need for people to have through and impactful and credible storytelling and news gathering) since I struggled to find anyone under 35 who thought this was a big deal, I gathered varied opinions. John Ourand, a DC native, pointed to the fact that The Post was his go-to for his entire life not just for sports but for anything in Washington and beyond, and that loss of both institutional knowledge and credible touchstones and trust was going to be devasting to the people of the District. It was not generational at all; it was an eroding of credibility in a time where credible sources of balanced coverage were being lost. Chris Stone, now at the startup OffBall (covering the intersections of sports as pop culture. A very forward-thinking platform) who was amongst the leadership of both Sports Illustrated in its heyday and the LA Times before it underwent a similar fate as the Post also pushed back on the generational issue and made it much more of a responsibility challenge. How is it, he asked, that when we KNOW sports is such a driver of interest across the board that a major publication like The Post cannot find a way to make it work?
Great question, and for part of the answer we go to Boston, and the last of the 20 podcasts we recorded on Media Row, with Tara Sullivan, sports columnist for The Boston Globe. Sullivan, you can listen to the 20-minute conversation here, pointed out that the issues The Post faced were ones that the Globe did as well. The solution, which took some time to work out, was to make sure everything newsworthy was looked at with a 360 degree approach using video (dedicated shows), audio (podcasts but there was also an attempt at longer form audio) and deep dives into subjects readers cared about that brought added value and were almost all paywalled (so as to avoid the advertising clicks issue). The result has been that The Globe has thrived with the model, delivering multimedia content, with deep accomplished storytelling to their subscribers while ALSO offering up content not as deep outside their paywall. It serves every demo and every level of interest in a market so closely tied to their teams, while also going into other interests like the Olympics and sports like golf and tennis and colleges and high schools. It is all inclusive, does not shy away from using technology to improve, listens to its readers and viewers and responds (Sullivan also noted in all her time there she has NEVER been asked to create a click-bait worthy story. She writes what the news dictates, and goes in depth with stories her followers care about).
Now there were some that felt The Post intentionally buried sports to make it easier to kill. One local media member pointed out it has been months since a sports story made it to the front page of the Post’s print edition or website, which made it easier to get lost in coverage. Others pointed out The Post has always been politics first and sports was an important but distant third or fourth in interest, and this was an easy way to save money. There was also the transient nature of DC, which makes local loyalties less deep than say Boston or Philadelphia or even New York, and much more like LA or Atlanta (where the Journal Constitution also dropped all of tis print two weeks ago).
Even with all that, it appears a way forward was fumbled, an audience was not engaged with multimedia for long trials, and there is a hope that a dumbing down in a world where attention spans are short should make this deep cut go away at some point.
Personally, I hope they are wrong. Like I believe those who missed the story on Bad Bunny were wrong. I hope it brings a viable opportunity to the DMV with an organization that sees multimedia with strong storytelling credibility as value for the audience that exists and can grow, same as a multilingual approach to storytelling with positive messages was created at halftime Sunday.
I hope. I believe, and I look forward to those with the entrepreneurial spirit and means to help lead forward, just like we saw at the half Sunday on NBC.
Curious learners help figure it out, an opportunity arises, whether we shop at Wegmann’s or the local cheese shop, we need to find a solution to satisfy our needs. Just saying NO is not the answer, working the issue is.
The Fluid Framing of “Iconic” Moments…