To stay relevant: Stop imitating the fans

The Esquire's Chuck Klosterman's recent piece, Four Ways to Save Sports Media, tells sports journalists this: Stop obsessing about the chatter and the ratings and focus on the sports. He argues that mainstream sports media still own the dialogue in U.S. culture about sports but they won't for long unless they change course and move away from making stories out of TV ratings and replicating sports-bar arguments on television. His most intriguing suggestion is that media producers consider killing the micro, by-the-minute coverage of off-field sports issues, which he says ultimately kill the effectiveness of sports journalism because such coverage kills perspective. I would agree, especially when it comes to perspectives on crime and athletes.