The post in question at This Is American Soccer (TIAS), one of the oldest and most thoughtful American soccer blogs out there, was entitled “American soccer media landscape needs to get beyond the blog.” It’s an incisive, intelligent exploration by Adam Spangler of soccer writing and the possibilities of forming new, in-depth coverage of the game in America “beyond the blog”.

Though dated February 2010, the questions Adam asks about how this can happen remain valid today:

Soccer journalism’s living death is a real problem, one we can only hope changes in the wake of a World Cup year (and bid for 2018/2022), increased MLS, USMNT, and national player success, and the overall consumer growth of the sport. In lieu of what sometimes seems like every blog trying to be everything to everyone—in the wake of the reshuffling of media names in the ever changing of world of journalism, what should it all mean?

We are not lacking for words on American soccer (can you keep up with the blogosphere?), and I am supremely sure the quality writers are out there, either underemployed (or not really employed at all, writing for nothing in their free time with the consequences this has for the type of coverage created, as interesting as some of the writing is), or churning out words at an obscene rate to attract enough eyeballs to keep the likes of goal.com in business.

We lack the publications that have as their defining marker what Adam calls “long-lead feature writing.” For Adam, this absence is particularly reflected by the dearth of stories that tell us more than the surface story about American soccer; in particular, of how a fan connects to and understands players. That requires spending time with the subject, and that usually means a cost is entailed, one few existing publications are prepared to pay for soccer stories. As Spangler says:

Players by and large aren’t millionaires, and they could use some attention both for the sake of their game and off-field marketing pursuits. Compared to other sports, more soccer players are highly educated, offering intelligent opinions but also, and more importantly, they have unique paths and stories (just stop asking them about how well the team did and begin spending as much time talking about off the field as on it).

Many readers are simply too young to know what they are really missing—that imaginative and telling narrative that brings their sports heroes to life and reflect the lives of readers while taking them into the lives of players. I don’t, for example, know a single thing about Blanco and his life in Chicago and MLS. That’s a shame. Angel in NYC? For real, America’s best soccer player, Landon Donovan, has never had a proper feature article written about him?

Adam is quite right on this. For me and for the other founders of XI, this is only one element of North American soccer that simply isn’t being told; at least since the passing of Steven Wells, most articles on fan culture – to pick my area of focus – scratch only the surface. Journalists and bloggers have only the most cursory understanding of the beautiful madness that drives fans to spend hundreds of volunteer hours creating elaborate tifo displays for MLS clubs owned by billionaires, or of how social responsibility should (does?) play into fan group activities, or of how North American soccer is refracted from ultra culture elsewhere, or of how MLS’ commercial emphasis threatens a co-option of a fiercely independent but fragile culture. In fact, even the surface of those stories have barely been scratched.

The same goes for women’s soccer; for ethnic identity and soccer; for the business of the sport; for youth development; the grassroots of the game at amateur and lower-league level; the way game the is administered; the way it is played; its tactical development on this continent. And so on, all so little understood, all so little explained by the people that matter to people who can write about it in-depth entertainingly and intelligently, in ways where an editor engages with a writer and shapes a story over weeks or months, in a fashion that is then visually laid out and presented to enhance the story, rather than to generate clicks on google ads.

To get back to Jason’s original tweet, hopefully the establishment of both XI and Howler are steps “beyond the blog”, with two quarterly print magazines giving writers some time, some space, some support in crafting stories that tell compelling narratives about North American soccer. Speaking for XI, a very specific niche will be filled; this won’t be a general purpose magazine telling timely stories, it will be one theme per issue, explored in eleven unique ways. I’m not sure exactly what Howler are planning, but I am excited to find out.

I’m also very interested to see if these new quarterly publications do indeed to prove to be steps toward more in-depth soccer media: it doesn’t, by any means, always have to be print, or even via the written word. It just has to be thoughtful, it has to be resourced, and it has to sell – or it’s unlikely to succeed. For XI, that funding has to come from the soccer community, using a resource for launch capital Spangler understandably didn’t mention over two years ago: Kickstarter, a rather fantastic way for creative projects to get off the ground. Hopefully, as soccer grows on this continent, its media will find more and more ways grow up with it.

That’s the conclusion one could draw from this New York Observer piece on the dismal failure of the decision by Newsday, a Long Island daily newspaper, to put their content behind a pay wall.

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.

Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.

“I heard you say 35 people,” he said, from Newsday’s auditorium in Melville. “Is that number correct?”

Mr. Jimenez nodded.

Now, there are some mitigating factors here; a good chunk of Long Island’s population doesn’t need to pay to access the content, as they get free access already due to their print subscription to Newsday or to the local cable company (part-owned by Newsday’s owners).

Having said that, Newsday invested $4m in the website redesign and relaunch (Jesus, was it coded in caviar or something?). A $9,000 dollar return isn’t exactly good business.

I mention all this in the context of our regular discussions here on the future of soccer media, which in the United States is particularly vulnerable to the failure of newspapers to find a profitable model to continue paying for real journalism.

This snippet about Newsday is just another indication that the paywall model needs serious refinement if it’s to work outside the confines of business reporting, which has what at least readers will perceive as a direct monetary value and scarcity value for subscribers.

But in terms of a general interest newspaper, the fact Newsday has attracted a whole 35 subscribers is right now sending shudders up the spines of executives from the Times of New York to the Times of London.

I’m going to start the new year by making an assumption. Most of us have probably read enough live-blogs, ‘takes’ on other people’s reporting, baseless speculation, and lists. To put it as simply as possible, the internet is doing us no favors.

Here’s the thing, and I’m making it soccer-specific. I can only hope that anyone trying to run a soccer site gets what I’m describing and would prefer a different model.

Think of it like this. How many writers and editors working from multiple locations would it take to really cover every single issue that arises during the 24-hour Worldwide soccer news cycle? 30? 50? Approaching a hundred experts getting paid for their time? Yet we’re operating with the expectation that all sites should be general. Even specialty sites fall for it, looking for ways to extend rather than deepen.

[ .. ]

Right now, the web doesn’t think much of those that go against the idea of multiple posts every single day. Forget about taking time, there’s an audience to serve.

Short or long form, it becomes about churn. The more the better, and a site’s numbers will prove the point. That has very little to do with building an audience of real people genuinely interested in what a site covers.

Getting past the idea that there’s a ‘have to’ and replacing it with a ‘want to’ would cure a lot of this immediately. Narrow the focus, commit the resources, and see what happens.

I’m not going to go to MLSnet for international soccer news. I’m not going to visit The Guardian for their MLS coverage. I’m not checking any soccer site for happening bands, fashion advice, or the latest in pop culture. I don’t have the patience for writers that want to make everything a joke or a crisis. No thanks to anybody confusing ‘long form’ with ‘bad editing.’ Spare me the instant expert.

What I want to read is simple in theory: interesting and entertaining stories well told. I’m going to assume I’m not the only one.

You’re certainly not, J (of course, to plead guilty, we here spit out multiple posts a day and our remit is as broad as the global game, though we only occasionally offer fashion advice).

There are several sites telling good stories in the manner that I think J would appreciate: the point here isn’t to name names on who does and who doesn’t, but it’s no secret the respect yours truly has for the likes of the Global Game, Run of Play, This Is American Soccer, and a few others.

But there’s no doubt they are buried under an avalanche of poorly written, repetitive or speculative pieces regurgitating the same stories with little original insight. Sadly, professionals are often even more guilty than amateurs of this in American soccer writing. Newspaper coverage is unlikely to improve in this economy and era for the printed press; the amateur blogs do not make enough money to allow the good writers the luxury to really research and write original pieces often enough; the freelance writers pop off one good story in ten, showing at times they have the talent, but too rarely the necessary editorial oversight or motivation. Too often, as J says, we are simply in churn, counting pageviews for pennies.

The question, then: are there any models developing that might give us more “interesting and entertaining stories well told” in the future?

Official, or Pravda, Journalism

Let us start with the least obvious possibility: that MLS itself will tell us these stories. We speculated a few months ago that MLS teams would go down the route of some other American sports teams and vastly increase their in-house content production to fill the void caused by the lack of coverage of their teams in the local and national press: the death of the newspaper beat writer bodes ill for deep coverage of MLS teams. This appears to be exactly what is happening, judging by a comment left by Chris Schlosser of MLS on J Hutcherson’s piece:

Very interesting column, I am in the middle of relaunching MLSnet.com. For the 2010 season you will have an entirely new site on both the national and local level. We started local with the realization that fans are fans of a club first and a league second (if at all). Each local club will have independent editorial control over their site, every club is in the process of hiring dedicated local writers and content producers to cover each club and the soccer scene in each city. This local coverage will be suplimented with a new national editorial team, the national team will provide coverage of national stories, the league and analysis of what is happening in and around MLS and soccer in the US. We have a ton of work between now and March to put all of the pieces in place but are excited about the prospects for 2010.

This can, of course, be done very well or very badly, as we commented before: we will simply have to wait and see what happens. MLS has already launched its MLS Insider blog under the guidance of Shawn Francis (see the interesting comments to our post about that hire by MLS), but as of right now, it’s too early too tell what this aggressive in-house effort will mean for the Truth in American soccer media. It is, however, at least one model that will give numerous writers payment and attention to allow them to write deep, locally driven pieces: albeit, in that awkward situation of being paid by your subject to cover it.

Paid Content

The lusted after elixir for publishers from your smallest local newspaper to Rupert Murdoch, the return of the pay wall around content to fund journalism as the old dead trees model dies continues to rear its head, with the forthcoming Apple Tablet the latest wet dream of magazine publishers to resurrect their format and business model in the digital era. Our discussion of the possibilities for paid content recently came from a proposal by American Soccer News that this model could work in a niche are like American soccer. To reiterate:

American Soccer News offers a different solution: an old one, a discredited one in general parlance, but one that does intrigue me: paid content, via a dedicated, high-quality start-up site.

The idea is to have dedicated coverage for each Major League Soccer team. This is an area that has historically been underserved (at best) or completely ignored (at worst) by local newspapers. And yet the demand for news is certainly there. Just take the Philadelphia Union, the newest MLS team to begin play next season. The team has already sold 6,000 season tickets (as of six months ago!) yet does not have a single dedicated beat reporter from a major newspaper or wire service. That’s at least 6,000 individuals who are left wanting for news about their team.

ASN concludes that this would best be started at a single team, with a $200,000 start-up cost for staff and expenses, which could be funded by a monthly fee of $5-10 range by around “3,000 subscriptions”, commenting  ”That’s significantly less than the amount of people who put down season ticket deposits for the Philadelphia Union.”

Could this work? The only way we will find out is if someone has the balls to smack down $100k+ to find out. I don’t see that happening anytime soon, and the future of paid content on the internet remains doubtful: the Free is not easily defeated.

Citizen Journalism

Not as trendy as it once was as a model for the future of journalism,  but we have seen some green shoots for citizen journalism in American soccer this year. Several bloggers have produced some excellent reporting in the areas often too little covered by the mainstream outlets: the lower leagues, this offseason more interesting than ever, thanks to the fantastically bitter battle between the USL and NASL to earn US Soccer Federation recognition as Division II leagues. Particularly passionate but well sourced work has come from Brian Quarstad at Inside Minnesota Soccer and Kartik Krishnaiyer at his various outlets.

Unfortunately, the good citizens are hurt by the bad citizens. For every good piece on the USL/NASL crisis, there have been three poor ones by bloggers and even paid professional writers with speculative theories that wouldn’t look out of place in a John Birch Society publication in terms of their grounding in fact. Certain sites — you know who they are — suck up a lot of page views despite their lack of quality, and hurt the reputation of the soccer blogosphere as a whole; this makes it hard for the good citizen journalists to be noticed, respected and make any money.

An Incomplete Future

I do not know which, if any, of the above possibilities might aid the development of good soccer writing. But perhaps it is wise to remember how young the soccer media is here; sure, the sport has a long history in America, but it has hardly been a steady rise likely to prompt regular, established media coverage.

As we know, the mainstream sports media largely ignores American soccer: there are few opportunities here for a budding Tim Vickery, David Conn or Gabrielle Marcotti.

Still, once upon a time in England, the mainstream media did not ignore football so much as it was openly hostile to it (The Sunday Times in 1985, after Heysel: football is a “slum sport watched by slum people in slum stadiums”). Fans responded through self-published fanzines, and eventually, much higher quality football writing developed out of this. From When Saturday Comes came Fever Pitch (in a roundabout way). This was crucial to the rehabilitation of football in cultural consciousness in England (along with many other factors, but this point should not be missed).

Fans turned around the medium of print that had been used to disparage them into something to build the discourse of the sport positively from the ground up. Whatever the particular and peculiar circumstances of all this, the fact is it essentially took one hundred years of professional football before “interesting and entertaining stories” were regularly written about the sport in England. There were some exceptions to this prior to the fanzine explosion, but as few as far between as the good writing is today in American soccer.

We are of course writing in a new medium that is still inventing its own rules about how content is paid for and appreciated.  J Hutcherson wrote in the column we began with that “the internet is doing us no favors,” and independent soccer media ventures earlier this decade did not end well. But I will deliberately take J the wrong way here and say let us not blame the medium; the internet offers us an opportunity to do ourselves a big favour with the ability to write, learn about and appreciate the world of soccer in so many deep and unique ways not possible before, and to share this with each other.

We do need to find a way to ensure the churn and chatter does not overwhelm our ability to think and reflect, and for original voices to emerge and be heard — and paid for. Whether it is one of the models mentioned above, or something new, remains to be discovered, but the passion and talent I see out there despite the obstacles makes me think it will come.

Image credits: Regurgitated, by love-my-dog on Flickr; Pravda, by Clashmaker on Flickr; Paid Content, by Stefan on Flickr; Citizen Journalism, by The Blackbird on Flickr; Zines, by artnoose on Flickr.

Big Story
A couple of months ago, we discussed the ongoing problem of the lack of coverage of MLS in American sports journalism, a problem only likely to get worse as print media digs its own grave (this was prompted by Richard Whittall’s excellent discussion of the crisis).

Many MLS teams remain without a dedicated journalist at their local newspaper, and in this media climate, they are not likely to be hiring one soon. Our solution, albeit a very unsatisfactory one from the standpoint of independent journalism, was that teams (as is happening in other sports) might hire journalists to cover their own team.

American Soccer News offers a different solution: an old one, a discredited one in general parlance, but one that does intrigue me: paid content, via a dedicated, high-quality start-up site.

The idea is to have dedicated coverage for each Major League Soccer team. This is an area that has historically been underserved (at best) or completely ignored (at worst) by local newspapers. And yet the demand for news is certainly there. Just take the Philadelphia Union, the newest MLS team to begin play next season. The team has already sold 6,000 season tickets (as of six months ago!) yet does not have a single dedicated beat reporter from a major newspaper or wire service. That’s at least 6,000 individuals who are left wanting for news about their team.

ASN concludes that this would best be started at a single team, with a $200,000 start-up cost for staff and expenses, which could be funded by a monthly fee of $5-10 range by around “3,000 subscriptions”, commenting  ”That’s significantly less than the amount of people who put down season ticket deposits for the Philadelphia Union.”

It’s interesting, now we see the likes of Rupert Murdoch also threatening paywalls around content, to consider the recent recollections of a paywall pioneer, Salon.com managing editor Scott Rosenberg, writing in the Guardian this week. Salon went to a paid model way back in 2001, and he concludes that “As for the question of how “niche” you need to be for a paywall to work – I think it’s pretty simple economics: if you have a product that is scarce, you can charge for it more easily. Specialised information, information that people need to earn their livings and can’t get elsewhere, and so on. If there are free alternatives, you are not going to get very far, even with an edge in quality. You can also make it work if you have a relatively low cost structure and a very loyal set of readers who have some commitment to your product as a cause.”

It’s possible ASN’s model for American soccer matches this, given the scarcity of serious content on each MLS team and small but fanatic followings in certain cities, though somebody’s going to need to pony up a couple of hundred thousand dollars to find out.

Worldwide News

• Red Bull New York are gambling on a European with no experience of Major League Soccer to revive their fortunes in the most important year in the club’s history, as they move into a new stadium. Erik Solér has officially taken over as the Red Bulls Sporting Director and General Manager: he will be running the club on and off the field. It’s hard enough to get to grips with MLS as a foreigner, given its unique place in American sports culture and its byzantine rules, even harder in a place where failure has become the tradition. While the fact the only way is up will help Solér, along with the excitement of a new stadium, the wisdom of such a choice has to be questioned.
• In the ongoing crisis in America’s lower league that we again discussed yesterday with regard to the USSF’s intervention, other option for the nascent revived NASL would be for the Canadian Soccer Association to act as the sole sanctioning body.  The 24th minute has the scoop on this prospect, but it has to be said the CSA has hardly garnered a great reputation for developing the sport in North America, and this would surely be a last ditch option should the USSF fail to successfully mediate their dispute with the USL.
• When soccer gets featured in a quasi-academic American journal of foreign affairs, you can be pretty sure it’s not going to be a fairytale story. And so Foreign Policy looks at the vicious fall-out from the Algeria-Egypt World Cup qualifying battle, concluding that “any vestiges of pan-Arab fellow-feeling are in shreds today, and underlying political issues have come to the fore as the soccer fight grows more personal.” Though this is a pretty well-informed piece, it’s fairly easy to exaggerate the media and public rhetoric that surrounds these games and turn it into another “soccer war” story.
• Flamengo won the Brazilian championship this weekend: Fernando Duarte has a good piece on what this means for football in Rio, a storied footballing city but one lacking in recent success, while the Independent takes a look at the remarkable resurrection of Adriano.
• Seems like a curious time for FIFA’s Director of Communications to quit, but this story doesn’t give us much detail on what the backstory might be. Anybody have the scoop?

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story
There is an excellent debate going on at the pages of A More Splendid Life about the future of soccer journalism (or really, the future of journalism in general), with his post yesterday on the impending doom for us all as the “so-called “newspaper model” seems as yet irreplaceable when it comes to affording a living wage for journalists”.

This sparked something of a debate as a few pointed out some blogs have found ways to generate significant income. Certainly, and good for them. But it’s quite clear how one has to target editorial content very specifically to generate significant traffic and monetary reward. The time and expense needed to do serious longform journalism — including travel — is not rewarded well monetarily in the online era, even if you end up writing the greatest 2,000 word blog post ever on African youth development.

Richard’s follow-up post today addresses this very well.

I know there is a route whereby money can be made from bloggin’ about soccer, and I know several of us have commandeered that route with great success. However, that approach, sorry to say, has little or nothing to do with the sort of long-form journalism and first person reporting we’ve come to take for granted from print media.

For one, a money-making approach to blogging requires one, in part, to cover those areas that will garner the most web traffic possible. Because newspapers were traditionally purchased as a whole unit, leaving consumers at the whim of the entire editorial staff to read what they chose to cover, beat writers had the luxury of chasing some out-of-the-way stories on their individual merit, rather than having each and every individual tailored to the interest of the broadest audience possible.

Will this freedom ever be possible in the era of digital content? Answers on a postcard, please.

Worldwide News

• It’s lockdown in Sudan ahead of the Algeria-Egypt World Cup playoff game. We all heard about the violence surrounding the weekend’s clash, with the head of the Algerian football federation Mohammed Raouraoua stoking the fire by blaming his Egyptian counterpart Samir Zaherfor the trouble. “He is the origin of all the events that occurred, including the barbaric aggression that injured… our players,” Mr Raouraoua said.
• England’s World Cup bid has been much criticised, with FA Chairman Lord Triesman under fire, but David Conn suggests much of this furor may be fueled by another agenda: Triesman’s occasional critiques of the Premier League.
• Relegated Oita Trinita will receive $6.7m in emergency funding in Japan, the first time the new fund has been dipped into.
• Alex Ferguson expresses his distaste for the increasingly prominent role played by agents, in a speech contrasting past and present.
• Authorities in Cyprus are taking the unpleasant step of forcing all fans to present state ID cards to purchase match tickets, saying they need to enforce banning orders as violence continues to plague the sport there.
• There is an absolutely disgraceful piece of “journalism” in The Times today (the freedom of the old model still generates plenty of crap), as James Ducker attempts to polish the image of Manchester City Chairman Garry Cook, much vilified in the past for his greedy, elitist ideas. It’s all fair and good to say we should take another look at Cook or his ideas, but please don’t present as your main piece of evidence the fact that he helped rescue your credit card at a fancy restaurant, James. Maybe journalism is already dead.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Their editorial explaining this further concluded that,

Major League Soccer’s media relations is not at the level of the other professional sports, even when it’s staffed by people who have worked in those sports. Where the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball provide access, interviews, and raw materials well past Major League Soccer and still manages to run comprehensive league websites, MLS opts for one or the other.

The result is the kind of coverage where writers chase press release material and the majority of articles are responsive rather than the kind of profile or investigative work you read or see with the other sports.

The good news is that this week USSoccerPlayers announced they would be resuming their coverage.

At the end of the 2007 MLS season, USSoccerPlayers pulled its general coverage in response to treatment from Major League Soccer and its clubs that made fair coverage all but impossible. Since then, Major League Soccer has shown they are willing to open a discussion and push for change. We recognize the attempt, if not the short-term outcome.

It’s critical for the future of American soccer that it has a vibrant and challenging media covering it, so it’s positive to see MLS has accepted a dialogue on this with USSoccerPlayers .

Yet only once again this week, a journalist criticised the way MLS and US Soccer treats the media, this time in Los Angeles. “No one wants the kind of regurgitated coverage we get stuck producing sometimes,” Andrea Canales wrote in the blog Sideline Views.

The media aren’t the enemy. We’re trying to cover the sport that so many involved with say needs more coverage, and instead of assistance, we’re dealing with a lot of resistance. It doesn’t really make sense. Agents and organizations such as U.S. Soccer and MLS and the individual teams need to think about how much they want to control their players and club information versus how much they want the public to even know who they are.

Canales says covering the Galaxy has become an exercise in dealing with stonewalling.

It’s annoying when news about the team breaks on the East Coast because every question I’ve asked about the topic here results in a denial. If a trade gets to MLS headquarters in New York and someone is going to leak it there, for heaven’s sake, admit that transfer to me, Luis, Grahame, Billy or Jaime first, so publicity for the team shows up where the team actually plays. Instead, it’s become harder to get any information from the Galaxy, especially since Beckham arrived.

MLS is fighting for attention in the most competitive sports media market in the world, and it’s doing so from a position of weakness compared to many other sports. Why is it pissing off the very media it needs for stronger local coverage to thrive?

Update: Another MLS beat journalist complains about his team blowing him off, this time the excellent Luis Arroyave of the Chicago Tribune:

I’m going to let you guys in on a secret — I could have gotten a lot more Fire coverage in the paper the last few weeks. The Bears season ended in December, the Bulls stink, baseball doesn’t start until late March, and I have an editor who wants to see more soccer in the Tribune.

Unfortunately, someone thought it would be a good idea to put a muzzle on the Fire lately, which means I have less Fire news to put in the paper.

Maybe it’s my fault for not having better sources. But in my defense, I’ve been on the job for two years. The beat writers with the best sources in MLS, Steven Goff and my boy Ives Galarcep, have been on the job for at least 10 years. I’ve broken a ton of stories without the help of the Fire front office, but it’s impossible for me to rely only on sources for news.

Rather than keep complaining about this, I’m going to use the rest of the MLS off-season to improve our soccer coverage in other areas. This includes the U.S. national team, the European leagues, the Storm, and Chicago’s new pro women’s soccer team.  And no, I’m not going to completely ignore the Fire. I do realize that fans want updates on their team.

I just wish the Fire would realize that as well.