What has happened to The Sporting News?

[tonypug]

The Sporting News at one time was the trade paper of baseball. No matter what month of the year it was almost entirely devoted to baseball. I looked at a copy today and it had a total of four pages on baseball. What a shame such a great baseball publication has fallen so low.It now takes two publications, Baseball America and Sports Weekly(used to be Baseball Weekly) to cover what used to be in The Sporting News, and they don't do it as good. Anyone who has access to The Paper of Record should look up an old copy of The Sporting News and see what I mean.

[Joltin' Joe]

Sports Weekly(used to be Baseball Weekly)

I was very disappointed with that change. I used to subscribe to Baseball Weekly and loved it. Then they notified me stating that the only way they can survive is adding Football and becoming Sports Weekly. Not only did the baseball coverage shrink in half, it sucked too! When my subscription ended, I did not renew. :mad:

[trosmok]

Wow, I remember TSN being the very first publication I subscribed to, and would beat my brothers down to get to the mailbox first. They didn't give a fiddler's fart about baseball, they just liked making me mad by swiping it and hiding it for hours on end. It was fat and the cheap ink smudged at even a hint of moisture, and was on grayish newspaper stock. As I reached high school and later, I noticed the guys my age would start reading it from back to front, because injuries, waivers, and minor league stuff that held a more personal interest were buried in the latter pages. I'm not sure when the stock and format changed, but it began around the same time as SI became more than half advertising, and might have been around the mid-seventies when I let my subscription lapse. I haven't seen TSN in quite a while, and it sounds like I might not even recognize it if I did run across it at the newstand.

[Astro]

They stopped putting players' stats and more than one or two paragraphs about the team about 2 years ago

I remember when they used to list the players stats and have an entire column for each team, those days are long gone

[TonyK]

It is the sign of the times. In the late 1800's, the Sporting Life and the Sporting News were almost all baseball news. Most pro leagues were covered and boxscores of both ML and minor league games were included. The articles were terrific too.

Can you imagine how excited they got when the new issue arrived in the mail or in the local cigar shop? That was a fan's only way of keeping up with the ML season unless they lived in a ML city.

[Brian McKenna]

major league baseball does a horrible job of promoting itself - they have two of the greatest to ever play - bonds and arod - in uniform now and mlb makes no effort to push their legacy or the legacy of others

the magazine needs to survive - they aren't going to do it catering to the vast minority of the country that care about certain intricacies

[west coast orange and black]

tsn's decline has been sad to witness, i agree, guys.

sports weekly nee baseball weekly is a usa today production which is under the news corporation umbrella owned by ruppert murdock, who shamelessly promotes his own financial interests at the expense of real news. so it is not surprising to me that baseball weekly is only a shell of its former self.

my subscription is a gift, so i receive it. but the first thing that i do with it is remove the non-baseball pages and tape the leftovers together.
when the cover does not feature baseball i print out and tape a baseball image over it.

[sschirmer]

I too miss BBW, but I don't think I would go to the extremes that Tony does, as I do enjoy my football and basketball too. I'm really afraid for the future of baseball at this point. I think the younger generations lack to patience for the game, and miss the beauty of the boxscore.

[leecemark]

--I subcribed to TSN for many years also, but let my subscription lapse a couple years ago. It had declined to the point where I could flip through the parts that interested me during the course of a visit to the bathroom.

[tonypug]

--I subcribed to TSN for many years also, but let my subscription lapse a couple years ago. It had declined to the point where I could flip through the parts that interested me during the course of a visit to the bathroom.
You would think, somone with vision would buy The Sporting News and restore it to what it once was. I know you can access almost everything from the internet, but getting everything in one newspaper was really special. I also thought Sports Weekly was part of the answer, until they cut baseball coverage in half. I like football, but there are already several weeklies that cover nothing but football. If baseball was smart(they aren't) they would help subsidize someone to bring back their industries newspaper.

[Astro]

TSN will have 12 pages for only NASCAR for a lot of issues during the summer, Baseball will have around 5 or 6 pages...

It's sad, do that many people who know how to read really like NASCAR?

[TonyK]

TSN will have 12 pages for only NASCAR for a lot of issues during the summer, Baseball will have around 5 or 6 pages...

It's sad, do that many people who know how to read really like NASCAR?

It is targeted to the people that just like to look at the pictures! ;-)

Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby must be rolling in their graves!

[wamby]

I think TSN really began to decline when they stopped using local beat writers who covered the various teams.

I haven't read Baseball Weekly since it became Sports Weekly.

When I was a kid TSN was my favorite magazine. I really like reading TSN from the 40s and 50s. They had more coverage of minor league baseball then than they have of major league baseball now.

[Mattingly]

Moving here, from CE, where I think it's more appropriate.

[Dizzy]

When I went to there building last fall I was told that they were recently bought out and were trying to be more like other sport mags because they needed young subscribers.

[tonypug]

When I went to there building last fall I was told that they were recently bought out and were trying to be more like other sport mags because they needed young subscribers.
Whatever happened to being unique and filling a need. I would think young baseball fans would relish the old style Sporting News. Instead of surfing all over the internet, you would have everything about baseball in one easy to read paper. Areal shame they feel they have to be like every other sports magazine.

[west coast orange and black]

Astro: ...do that many people who know how to read really like NASCAR?

or, "do that that many people who like nascar know how to read?" :eek: :o

[64Cards]

I read it on a fairly basis for about 20 years, from 67-87, agreed that TSN went way downhill years ago, is even worse today.

But I think a lot of periodicals are going to vanish off the shelves in the next 20 years, maybe less. The information or news they have isn't very current, not compared to what is available on all the cable channels or the net. Not to mention most news or sports writers are a bunch of hacks. I can find a lot more interesting and in-depth items about baseball on this site than I could ever find in TSN.

[tonypug]

I read it on a fairly basis for about 20 years, from 67-87, agreed that TSN went way downhill years ago, is even worse today.

But I think a lot of periodicals are going to vanish off the shelves in the next 20 years, maybe less. The information or news they have isn't very current, not compared to what is available on all the cable channels or the net. Not to mention most news or sports writers are a bunch of hacks. I can find a lot more interesting and in-depth items about baseball on this site than I could ever find in TSN.
Hopefully a couple of strong magazines will come forward and remain. The problem with the internet is a lot of the information you want is scattered on many different sites. The old style Sporting News, would be great today keeping all the information in one place. Their guides are still very good, to bad the paper isn't.

[The Commissioner]

The decline of The Sporting News has nothing to do with the popularity of baseball, etc. The reason it has gone downhill is because it is now owned by Paul Allen who is way more interested in promoting his Seahawks and Trail Blazers in a tabloid type ESPNesque rag than in supplying thoughtful sports journalism.

[tonypug]

The decline of The Sporting News has nothing to do with the popularity of baseball, etc. The reason it has gone downhill is because it is now owned by Paul Allen who is way more interested in promoting his Seahawks and Trail Blazers in a tabloid type ESPNesque rag than in supplying thoughtful sports journalism.
Just another reason to subscribe to Paper Of Record, Which has all the old Issues of The Sporting News available to view.When you compare the old to the new it almost makes you want to cry.

[chiefpaddy]

Now the former Baseball Weekly, which now is Sports Weekly, is adding Nascar coverage to its publication.How long before baseball is covered in two or three pages, like The Sporting News?I guess Bud and the boys are too invoved with squeezing a few more buks out of DC, then marketing themselves properly. They should be marketing baseball like the NFL markets football and Nascar markets auto racing. Then maybe there would be more interest in a baseball only publication. Football and nascar have their own publications as well as moving into baseball publications, and a lot has to do with marketing.