Golden Age to Info Age

photo courtesy of http://timpanogos.wordpress.com

The Golden Age of Sports and sportswriting is something that my generation sees in movies.  The Golden age of Sports and sportswriting is something that my generation, as well as generations to come, will only see in movies.

Today, it's not about novelty, and many times, it's not even about the beautiful, lengthy articles that Frank Deford strove to publish.  Today, it's about breaking the story as quickly as you can.  It's about technology and bending over backwards to provide audiences with short, to-the-point stories faster than anyone else can.



It isn't like it was back then, with late nights in motel rooms, knowing that your story would be in the paper the next day, just like everyone else's.  Now, sportswriters spend their games writing the majority of their stories, so that they can publish as it happens, and immediately after the game ends.

Their audience can't wait.  Their audience, if they're not already in front of their televisions or computer screens, spend their time refreshing their iPhones to update the article that was published during the game, trying to find out why their favorite player left in the third inning.

The only thing that my generation will see is more information and more ways to get it, even faster than we do now.  There will be more inventions like Twitter to deliver the news right when it happens, more inventions to make fans feel like they're right there.

Another Golden Age is impossible.

In a day where controversies litter the fields, ices, and tracks, in a day where independent blogs are just as popular as 'traditional' sportswriters, there is no room for another Golden Age.  Writers are not looked up to in the ways that they seemed to be before.  They are constantly accused, especially though the internet, of being too close to or not critical enough of a team.  Writers who still work for print are pushed to match the numbers of independent bloggers who have built faithful audiences.

There are too many writers and there is too much technology for another Golden Age to ever surface.  Fans want their sports news like they want all of their news-- instantly. 

And if you can't give it to them the way that they want it, all they have to do is search Google until they find someone who does.