THE HUGE POPULARITY OF CURRENT NASCAR

The State Newspaper, the largest newspaper in South Carolina (I believe) was once a strong supporter of NASCAR racing. Over the years we enjoyed the exclusive coverage by The State's own motorsports writers, Jim McLaurin, Jim Hunter, Joe Whitlock and others. All three of the named gentlemen were excellent writers and I especially enjoyed Jim McLaurin's sometimes unique look inside the sport. I have scrapbooks from the 60s containing articles from the State on races and sometimes (Daytona, Darlington, and Charlotte, and later to include Rockingham) almost the entire sports section was devoted to coverage.

The August 28, 1981, edition, in the "Weekend" section on the upcoming Southern 500 was a full page article, with color graphics all about me and my intense love for the sport. That was not even in the sports but the front page of the weekend section. Racing received many feature articles all the way through the nineties. After this morning, I'm wondering what we may have for The Southern 500 in Darlington this year.

The State no longerhas its own motorsports writers. They use reporters from other newspapers McClatchy owns, some good, some bad, and some so awful they didn't even know that Dale, Jr. had a Grandfather that tore up the Southern short tracks back in the day.

I guess my surprise this morning was the fact that, in six pages of sports, there was NO mention, not one word, about Talladega this weekend. Not one word about the Drivers' Council meeting with Brainless Brian in one of his rare appearances at a race track. I hear he didn't even tip the Uber driver who got him there from the airport. Oh, there was plenty of room to lament the fact that some players from one of our major universities haven't been drafted in the NFL dog and pony show yet. They had room for a highly overpaid college coach to have his picture taken with a couple of fans at a meet and greet at which he appeared. It would have been newsworthy, in my opinion, to report on the meeting with Brainless Brian.

Oh well, NASCAR can't even get a blip in the newspaper which once provided such excellent coverage. I know we find all we need to know on the internet now, but it would have been nice to read about that meeting over my bowl of Special K. What makes this even more impactful to me is the fact that I attend church with the Executive Sports Editor for the newspaper. He is an absolutely great guy. I do intend to mention this little fact to him at church tomorrow. It's not his fault as sports around this area consists of more about college football, baseball, basketball, tennis, and checkers than it does about news. If you read The State this morning, did you read about the 21 dead from a car bomb in the middle east? No? Why is that? They didn't have enough ink to print it after all the ink wasted on the NFL draft.

Ok, rant over for this morning.

I have several notebooks chock full of 1970s-1980s era news clippings from The Tennessean and Nashville Banner. Back in the day, reporters such as Larry Woody and Joe Caldwell covered Daytona, Talladega and the Nashville fairgrounds racing scene. Unlike The State, Spartanburg Herald, Charlotte Observer, Richmond Times Dispatch and a few others who wrote first hand account race reports, the Nashville papers generally carried wire service reports for the other races - including Bristol's events which always puzzled me.

Caldwell passed away decades ago, and the Banner is no more. Woody retired from The Tennessean as have scads of others following the acquisition and aggressive cost cutting "synergy" moves by Gannett Corp. My wife still pays for a subscription to The Tennessean - mainly for coupons and circulars on Sunday (:roll eyes:). Otherwise, I have little need for it.

Any racing coverage the paper has is simply a rehash of USA Today content from Jeff Gluck or AP reports from Jenna Fryar - all of which I've already read on-line long before it hits the Tennessean's presses.

The fairgrounds continues to defy the critics. When we were all about to begin shoveling dirt on it (some of us with a tear in our eye), the track stood firm. They hold about 8 races a season out there. Yet, I rarely see an ad, a preview, results, or any features about the track and racers in the paper. Admittedly, a lot of that falls to track management's unwillingness or inability to get the word out to the press. (The track's Facebook and Twitter use isn't very effective either.) Nonetheless.

It is a indeed tough quandary. Papers are dying because ad content has gone elsewhere and folks want to get their news in other ways. Yet folks still also want a rich, free press to cover the issues of the day and all the news that's fit to print. No easy answers.

I've really enjoyed my research efforts over the past few years since I've joined RR. I've plowed through more old newspapers the last 5-6 years than in all my previous ones combined. Looking to the future, I weep for those who would also like to crawl back through old webpages of "newspapers" only to get a 404 error because it is no longer available, because webpages aren't archived, or someone has edited / redacted the content after its original publication.

You guys are so right on! Or rather, should I say on point.

Things are so bad with The State now they have been cutting route carriers since last Summer. On a personal note Tim, this is one of the reasons I travel to visit Pappy every Sunday...to deliver a newspaper. He loves reading a paper and often remarks about racing not being covered as it once was. A definite sign of the times!

He doesn't want to learn how to use a computer so I'm thinking an Ipad may be in order at some point in the future, assuming he can read the small font. But, on the other hand that would take away from the joy of turning real newsprint pages while enjoying a cup of coffee.

It is truly sad what has happened to the coverage.

Tim, I knew every single one of those great writers you name personally and, of course, once employed Whitlock. Chase, I had some memorable meals (and after meals) with Larry and Joe. They were like twins on the road. We lost Joe way too soon.

Not only did our Richmond morning and afternoon papers each have award winning motorsports beat writers Jerry Lindquist, Harold Pearson, Randy Hallman and Ben Blake, they also staffed all Friday night races at our weekly Southside Speedway and both morning and afternoon paper always had photos from the modified and Sportsman races.

Some papers had great writers like Birmingham's Clyde Bolton, who only went to Talladega, Nashville, Atlanta and Daytona.

Spartanburg had a plethora of great writers over many years. Jim Foster went on to hear Dodge Division public relations before being hired by Bill France. Gene Granger was his own man and had more contacts than you can imagine. I've sat in his basement while he called Harry Ranier's wife on her private line to ask if Harry was selling to Robert Yates.

Many cities had many great racing writers. A few like Tom Higgins in Charlotte and Gerald Martin in Raleigh covered every single race. Others hit 5-10 per year, but they knew their racing and it's characters. Fayetteville's Thomas Pope has been terrific for decades and Sandy McKee in Baltimore was outstanding, as was Beth Tuschak in Detroit and later for USA Today. Add Bill Fleischman to the list, also and Shav Glick in L.A. Outstanding racing writers each.

We also had great Associated Press Motorsports editors like Bloys Britt and Mike Harris. Before it's near demise, UPI was blessed to have Deb Williams.

Now I see little evidence that those reporting on racing have a clue.

I had no idea that Tim was famous so long before I knew him. I want to see that full page color spread posted from the Columbia paper... no ands, ifs or but(t)s!

And Devin, about 4 months ago I cancelled my suubscription to the Charlotte paper. It's the first time in 67 years I have not had a newspaper in my house. But the content had shrunk to nothing and the price spiraled out of control. I haven't cut the cable, but I did cut the paper.

Oh the irony!!!! This is almost too funny to be real but it's the truth. I pay my subscription to The State yearly, at the end of June of each year. Last year, the rate was, as I recall, $282.00 which should have carried me through June 30, 2016. Today, in the mail, I receive the bill for renewal, which is shown in bold letters to be due by May 22nd. The first problem is, under contract law, because I had paid for the year, my subscription should not be due until June 30th. I am being cheated our of 39 days because the rates went up (unknown to me as I was never notified in writing of a modification to the contact. The new yearly rate is just about $12.00 short of $400.00. The State Newspaper has pulled a fast one and a highly questionable one if not legally, then surely morally. Can't even trust the guys down there any more.

I have decided that I will renew for only six months at the time. Partly because I'm not prepared to shell out $400.00 for a newspaper which might not last another year and based on their underhanded actions with this rate hike, I would fully expect if it goes out of business there would be no refund. I am ashamed for the newspaper for which I was a carrier for five years of my young life and which I have subscribed to for 45 years, faithfully. Goes to show you what loyalty will get you with the big corporations.

Ok, notice to The State. You've got me for six months. Whether you cover NASCAR or not is of no concern to me. Frankly, the poor quality of your paper and the printing these days does not warrant renewal, but because I need to keep up with obituaries and Dagwood and Blondie, I'll hang in for at least six months. Will you?

Wow. 67 years. It is out of control. I completely understand Dave!

Me too. I canceled mine 2 years ago though. Just not worth the cost.

At the height of Hoss Ellington's career, Wilmington'sStar-News had pretty good NASCAR coverage. I mean, it was not really great, and was sort of amateur-ish but they'd send a reporter to Charlotte, Rockingham, Darlington, and even Daytona. They went ballistic when Donnie Allison won Charlotte'sNational 500in 1976, in Hoss's back-yard car.It was a fun time. When the old Leland Raceway was in operation, they'd give weekly coverage of results and many feature articles too. Their NASCAR coverage has long-since past, and I tired to get them to cover the weekly races at the Dublin Motor Speedway (about an hour's drive from the port city) and the sports dept. was aghast. It was not "local" enough, or that's what I was told. My 30-something year subscription came to a screeching halt, a few years ago, when the price soared to over 200 $/year.