Real Sports: Frank Deford, left, and correspondentsPhoto: HBO
Frank Deford’s "Paper Cuts" piece that aired Sept. 15 on HBO on Bryant Gumbel’s "Real Sports" program should give vendors of sports journalism plenty to chew over.
It did that for me, a former sports-section reporter and editor, confirming some conclusions I had come to years ago.
Here was the description of Deford’s piece from the Real Sports Web site:
As newspapers across the country struggle to maintain circulation and clout in the volatile world of digital media, sports editors at virtually every daily newspaper have made difficult decisions to reduce staff and pages. The result has been a mass exodus of top writers from some of America's most prestigious sports sections, which has reshaped the reporting and consumption of sports news and opinion. In this REAL SPORTS/Sports Illustrated report, correspondent Frank Deford probes the decline of this great tradition and considers the prospects for newspaper sports sections in the new media environment.
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