Newspapers Not Sending Reporters on Road to Cover Bad Teams

Call it a sign of the economic times, an obvious way for a dying industry to cut costs, or just plain common sense. Any way you slice it, however, the fact that at least a couple of newspapers have decided it's no longer worth it to send reporters on the road to cover their cities' NBA teams is bad news for basketball fans.

Both newspapers in Washington, D.C. -- the Washington Post and the Washington Times -- have decided not to send their beat reporters along with the Wizards on the team's current West coast trip through Utah, L.A., Phoenix, and Denver.

Now of course, the local television crew will be there, and it's not like between ESPN, NBATV, and the always reliable Associated Press recap that we'll be stuck wondering if the team won or lost. But for true fans of the team, this simply won't cut it.

The beat reporters provide the story within the story, and cover plot lines that tend to develop over more than just a single game. Without them, fans are missing valuable insight into what's really going on with their team, both on and off the court. They're a vital part of keeping fans' interest up, even when times are as bad as they are for a team like the Wizards.

And as the blogosphere has told us, no matter how bad a team gets, they still have plenty of die-hard fans.

The Washington papers aren't the only ones that have made this decision, they're just the most recent. The L.A. Times stopped sending a traveling reporter with the Clippers back in January, and there might be other papers doing the same that we're just not aware of.

If the Clippers and Wizards were playing better or were set to make a run through the playoffs, you can bet that the teams would be getting the coverage they deserve. But I would argue that they deserve it anyway.

As Henry Abbott pointed out in a post on TrueHoop, "the model of old local media -- the way most of you follow your team -- is almost completely broken." The only word I'd argue with there is "almost." Because without someone there to follow the beat of teams as they travel, that model is, sadly, completely broken.