Olympics Travel a Hurdle for Local News Media

These days, the pain has spread to sports, with even travel that was once seen as a no-brainer falling victim to the bean counters. When Denver sports franchises made it to the playoffs in past years, the major network affiliates routinely assigned anchors or reporters to accompany players. This year, however, channels 4, 7 and 9 chose not to fund visits west to watch the Denver Nuggets be drubbed by the Los Angeles Lakers or north for the Minnesota Wild's home games against the Colorado Avalanche. "We're fortunate that the first rounds happened where there were CBS owned-and-operated stations," notes Channel 4's Wieland. "Minneapolis and Los Angeles both helped us, and we helped them by providing locker-room interviews here."

In contrast, the dailies continue to see value in having a beat reporter travel with the teams even before the post-season. The Rocky has slimmed its staff in a significant way through attrition and buyouts, but Temple doesn't believe that having scribes stop traveling to Colorado Rockies games against dreary opponents would help him keep an extra body or two. "There are a lot of costs associated with people that are much longer-term than whether or not you go to Los Angeles for a Dodgers series," he says — and besides, "you can't expect somebody to be an expert on a baseball team if they're only spending half their time with them. That's not the level of coverage we're devoted to."

Moore's mind isn't quite so closed on the subject. He can imagine cutting back on some regular-season coverage, especially if a team is going nowhere. "There have been times at other places I've worked where that's been the case," he says, "and that might become the case for us" if the budgetary squeeze doesn't ease. But he's not ready to stop sending sportswriters to certain significant annual contests, even when there's not a specific local hook. In February, Rocky media critic Jason Salzman criticized the Post for sending columnist Woody Paige to a Green Bay Packers-New York Giants tilt, claiming his coverage "contained almost nothing that a writer sitting in front of a television couldn't have gotten." This point was reinforced when Paige spent about a week in Augusta, Georgia, covering the Masters golf tournament. Paige filed four columns, but the only stuff that smacked of original reportage revolved around his attempt to quiz Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods; Mickelson kept his distance, and Woods blew him off at his earliest opportunity. Even so, Moore is ready to buy Paige a pass to next year's tourney. "We've decided that there are some signal events, like the Super Bowl and Wimbledon and the Masters, where it's important to give our take on what happens there," he says.

Good thing the others don't take place in China.