The Industry Column – 22 October

Established sports journalist Ian Stafford explains why the advent of online coverage into the mainstream is forcing the national newspapers to evolve if they are to survive.

It’s been creeping up now for some time in the world of sports journalism but now, finally, it’s official. The digital age is upon us and the supremacy of newspapers is over.

Of course the death of the newspaper has continuously been, like Mark Twain’s death, exaggerated.

The big national titles are still with us, of course, and will be for some quite considerable time, and the fact that they enjoy a collective readership of 11 million people hardly suggests an industry on its last legs, but their dominance is over and they are being swallowed up by the digital age.

It seems only a year or two ago that global sporting events were the media domain of TV and newspapers. Website journalists were viewed with suspicion and not a great deal of respect. All the recognised writers held down top jobs on the national daily and Sunday newspapers and the website boys were, well, just boys.

I first noticed a change at the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France. Suddenly half the journalists were representing websites that were springing up at a relentless pace, or had already become established arms of more recognised media outlets such as the BBC and Sky.

By the 2008 Beijing Olympics the internet had not only caught lost ground on the newspapers, it was beginning to overtake to the extent that the sports sections of the nationals were becoming more concerned about their website coverage than what appeared in newsprint. Beijing became the first digital Games.

Suddenly the race was on not just to break exclusives, but to be the first to provide breaking news. Beating a rival organisation by two minutes was enough to claim a significant victory and the previous manner of providing news in the broadsheets or tabloids appeared dated.

The newspapers are only too well aware of this, which is why all now have significant online coverage making some of what appears in print null and void. Sports writers are no longer required to cover live events, itself a practice that requires great expertise in a stressful environment.

They now blog during sports matches, sometimes a dozen times, while still needing to focus on the bigger picture. A Saturday afternoon football match report is now available online almost instantaneously after the final whistle. Reading the same report the following morning over a cup of coffee at home has become, as they say in the fashion world, so last year.

So what’s next? For a start more recognised and respected writers will either be appearing more on the internet, or indeed be created by the internet. Websites will not just be providing words and pictures, but also footage which will threaten even the might of TV.

And newspapers? Well, right now they are suffering a torrid time, not helped by the recession. Jobs are going, the size of the newspapers has decreased in keeping with the lack of advertising, some are under enormous threat, such as The Observer and Independent, as well as London’s Standard which is now available free, and the 21- and-under generation has embraced a new method of obtaining their news.

They said TV would be the death of newspapers, of course, and they were wrong.

Newspapers learnt to evolve and they are still the best source of breaking significant stories that continue to set the agenda – the MP’s expenses row springs to immediate mind or, indeed, the Jonathan Ross scandal at the BBC which my own newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, broke – but in time the internet, as the calibre of those working on the various websites increases, should even invade this traditional domain of the print media.

Once again the national newspaper will need to evolve, just as it has done in the past, to guarantee a long-term existence.

All this is one of the reasons why I helped to set up sportsvibe.co.uk, the country’s first general online sports magazine.

The media and the world of sport embraced sportsvibe immediately, as the host of A-list names on the site will testify, and it does not require a soothsayer to state that this is not only the future, but the present.

The revolution has not just begun. It seems to me that the workers are already banging on the Emperor’s door.

Click on to www.sportsvibe.co.uk or follow Ian Stafford on twitter.com/sportsvibe.