'The Worldwide Leader in Sports’ a mission, not a catchphrase'

The Chicago Sun-Times is scared.

In recent years it's found itself backed into a corner, first by the rise of television journalism, then by the rise of Internet journalism. It's fought hard against the onslaught, deciding in tough times to stick to what it knows best: local news.

The Chicago Sun-Times' web site features a wide variety of Chicago-related stories, from the mayoral race to Oprah to local high school football scores, and by streamlining in this fashion the paper has managed to carve out a niche.

Unfortunately, its niche is about to come under fire. Sports news empire ESPN recently launched ESPNChicago.com, a web site designed to be the one-stop destination for Chicago-area sports.
Fans who log on can read, watch or listen to a wide variety of news regarding their favorite sports teams. They can watch a special Chicago-themed edition of "SportsCenter." They might prefer to listen to a podcast from Chicago sports authority Scoop Jackson. Or–get this–they might decide to check out the Illinois state high school football rankings.

The Chicago Sun-Times isn't just scared. It's terrified.

ESPN has weapons that the Chicago Sun-Times can never hope to match. For starters, they have not one but three television networks devoted to sports coverage. There's ESPN, the home of "Monday Night Football" and "SportsCenter," as well as ESPN2 and ESPN News. It is through "SportsCenter" that ESPN has asserted most of its dominance. The show, typically 60 minutes in length, was originally intended to be a collection of highlights from around the world of sports, designed to make sure that by the time viewers are finished watching they are completely caught up on all of the day's sports news.

In the thirty years since its premiere, "SportsCenter" has ever so subtly shifted away from its original blueprint. Once primarily focused on scores and highlights, "SportsCenter" now tends to center around plotlines and analysis. The games are still important, but not nearly as important as the story behind the game.

How will the signing of Michael Vick impact the Eagles' locker room? Is the fact that LeBron James will become a free agent at the end of this season a distraction for the Cavaliers? Will anybody sign Plaxico Burress, knowing that he's prone to shooting himself and wears sweatpants to nightclubs?

ESPN wasn't always like this. It used to be that the only storylines that mattered were the ones that played out on the field, court or rink. The Romans didn't care about the personal lives of the gladiators who fought lions and tigers in the Coliseum. They were interested in seeing someone get his leg ripped off. More recently than that, nobody was interested in the fact that Michael Jordan was (depending on who you listen to) a womanizer with a gambling problem. They just wanted to see the Bulls win a championship.

Most people seem indifferent to this shift in the nature of sports news. Sure, they reason, journalistic standards may have slipped a tiny bit, but that's a small price to pay for 24-hour coverage of all things sports. Look at how beneficial 24-hour sports coverage has been–without it, how would all those Arizona Diamondback fans living in Maine watch their favorite team?

What these people don't take into account is that ESPN's journalistic standards haven't merely slipped–they've taken a swan dive out of a spaceship. Take, for example, "NFL Live," ESPN's half-hour show devoted to all things NFL. Any given episode will feature four gentlemen sitting in a semi-circle speculating about the NFL. They will discuss things like, "Who will win the AFC North?" or, "How will Brett Favre's return impact the Vikings locker room?"–all of which are very interesting, no doubt, but none of which represent actual news.

Furthermore, the gentlemen who discuss these topics are specifically chosen to represent individual slices of the population. Ron Jaworski appeals to football traditionalists, while Trent Dilfer appeals more to MMA fans and Keyshawn Johnson appeals to flashy, well-dressed young men. Perhaps worst of all, while they may be chosen to represent different demographics, they rarely disagree with one another.

It is with this arsenal that ESPN marches into battle. The Chicago portion of the assault has been a complete success–only a month after its launch, it was the most-visited sports web site in the Chicago area, passing every single local newspaper and television station in the process. They are preparing to continue their offensive this fall in Dallas, and next year will see ESPN attempt to lay siege to the sports news scene in Los Angeles and New York.

It is clear that ESPN's vision is one of a "Sports Nation," and they're frighteningly close to achieving that dream. CNN's iReport allows viewers to break the news themselves by submitting videos and photos, and ESPN is hard at work on creating a similar infrastructure. Imagine a sports Wikipedia, with the ESPN logo in the upper left-hand corner, featuring soccer scores, Scrabble tournaments and everything in between.

Try not to feel bad for the sports reporter while you're enjoying this new wealth of information. He had it pretty easy for a while, writing about the Spurs or the Saints or the Sand Gnats, getting actual interviews with actual players in the hopes of gaining some actual insight into the way the game is played. Now we know better. Anybody with a computer could do his job.