We're not trying to squash other online sites that profile the game of football. Revenue Shutout Local sites that stay within the NFL's boundaries are taking advantage of the Net to expand their audience beyond traditional geographic limitations. But it's not cheap to provide that information. For college and professional sports coverage, newspaper-backed sites depend on their print columnists to describe the action to online viewers. The decision to drop Web coverage in the laps of print reporters may be due more to necessity than to matters of multimedia training.
Teams set limits on the number of credentials issued to a publication throughout the season.
Even if the team was willing to grant additional credentials, the newspaper may not have the human or monetary resources to devote an online-only staffer to the press box. As noted earlier, PioneerPlanet is cutting its live photography. In Milwaukee, the cost to produce Packers' game comes out of JS Online's budget, not the Journal Sentinel's, Longdin says. One site producer spends 15 or 16 hours on game days posting the live coverage, plus audio reports from post-game press conferences and some interviews conducted by Journal Sentinel print reporters. Another producer, stationed at Journal Interactive, handles the photo gallery and initial posting of the game story.