THE HUGE POPULARITY OF CURRENT NASCAR
Administrative
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.