I was wrong.
Yeah, I was wrong for about the millionth time.
This time it was my prediction readers like you are switching from newsprint for their news and getting it online. I still believe at some future time newspapers will be extinct. They have been in decline for some time now and there will come a time the rapid advance in electronics will completely overwhelm news gathered and printed on paper.
That, I’m sure will happen.
But I also thought readers of mine would easily transfer that readership from the The Sports Paper on newsprint paper to the online edition I have started at www.sportspaper.org.
Didn’t happen.
I was wrong.
I recently realized – a light bulb went on in my mind – that my readers, as well as others, have mostly abandoned the newspaper (circulation on the area daily has slipped/fallen from a high of around 42,000 back in the early 1990s to around 18,000, although I’m not certain of the exact figure. My information is about a year old.
Newspapers in general have seen advertisement revenue plummet over the years as companies have moved to the digital age to get the word out about them. The reaction of newspapers is to trim and trim and trim while finding other sources of revenue, some of it on the Internet.
I love our daily newspaper. I worked there for nearly 30 years and still write a weekly sports column for it, and occasionally help out with features or game stories. My time as a sportswriter there was a great experience, and the people who are still there or were there all good people who are and were dedicated to the writing craft and the community at large.
I hope the paper continues to have success, although as I said above it is fighting against a strong tide.
It is a tide I thought, wrongly as it turns out, would follow me online. And I was wrong. You and others who read their news online, I have finally figured out, go to what is familiar to them to get their news.
In fact, I do the same. I mainly read the Seattle Times, Al Jazeera, BBC, Bleacher Report and the Huffington Post. I get the Kitsap Sun in its newsprint edition as I have for nearly 44 years and don’t go often to its Website.
I don’t know where you go to find the news, but wherever it is you probably are there every day just like I am at my favorite sites.
It is difficult to find Websites that might be more informative. You have to have some idea of what you are looking for and then it takes time. And I believe in our world today, we are not patient people when it comes to trying something new, especially if it’s out of our comfort zone.
As a result, not many of you travel to my online site to see what I am doing with local sports news or what crazy thoughts I might have in a column. But that’s the way it goes. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
On this, I’m losing. I should have known better.
I’m a pretty stubborn guy, however. I’m going to continue on. I don’t like to lose. I don’t like to be wrong. I’ll figure this thing out – somehow. I love to write, and even though I have gotten old and am slipping in health a bit, I’m not giving up.
Maybe I will be like Royal Brougham, the late Seattle PI sports editor and columnist who died at a Seattle Seahawks game on Oct. 30, 1978 (he was 84 and had been writing sports for 68 years, and a Street near CenturyLink Field is named after him).
I’m sorry I went on like that. There has to be some good news before I end this. I guess it’s the Seahawks, who certainly look even stronger through two exhibition games than most had predicted.
Football, though, is a strange game. You can look good and then get creamed. It’s a physical game that can trigger strong emotions, and when a team gets on a high emotional roll there isn’t a whole lot you can do to stop it from running right over you.
My biggest memory of that is a lesson that has followed me for over 60 years. I was about 10 or 11 and playing midget football. We had a sorry team. I was the quarterback and there were few times that I escaped from on-rushing defensemen. I would take a few steps back and be surrounded by the enemy. Think about it. That is real frustrating not to have a chance to complete a play. I would go back in the huddle and scream at the guys to block. It didn’t happen often.
But the lesson occurred when we and another league winless team finally met on the gridiron. We had somehow talked a high school junior varsity player still was of age to play for us.
Bob played right tackle for us that game and I ran virtually every play right over him. He cleared everything out and we backfield mates ran like we were all Jim Browns. We won 36-7.
Unfortunately, that was the only game Bob played for us. I think our high school coach caught wind of it, and stopped that nonsense.
We had to play that team again – the league had a home-and-away schedule – and this time we got crushed, 37-6. And the only difference was Bob. Without him our emotional level was lower than an earthworm, and I suspect the other team was all fired up to gain revenge. The result was not pretty.
But I learned from that. I reflected on it, even at my early age, and figured out no matter the enemy, no matter the odds against me, I could and should maintain a healthy positive emotion, and that would make me play better.
I still had fear. But that fear would dissolve somewhat if I played with positive emotion and did not let setbacks get me down. So after that I was hell on wheels. We still didn’t win, but I always walked off he field believing I had played as well as I could.
That’s the way with my Website. I will give it all I can, do it with a healthy dose of positive emotion and if I lose, so be it.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.