Tales of new blogs, and how Mexican futbol scores changed my life

Also file under: an incredibly shifting media world

A quick story about my days as a sports writer at The Dallas Morning News:

I fought the good fight for years to get my newspaper interested in running scores from the Mexican league. I failed miserably.

Think about that for a second. Around here, 35-40 percent of the population is Hispanic. Most of them trace lineage to Mexico.

Still, it was like beating my head against a telephone pole.

And yet I tried. At the time, I still had some faith in the industry. I wasn’t yet convinced it was a completely unsustainable business model. (I gradually became convinced so, which is why I left the newspaper biz in 2006.) I talked to editors about this matter (as well as other, of course) repeatedly as we groped for ways to arrest the industry decline. I asked in earnest, “Are we interested in turning Latino members of the community readers of The Dallas Morning News?” And I was being sincere.

If the marketing powers that be had made some strategic decision not to target Hispanic readers (leaving that segment to our Spanish-language partner publication, perhaps), then so be it. But I was told, “Yes, of course we want to get Hispanic readers into the habit of reaching for our newspaper.”

“Very well, then! So … why can’t we get Mexican league scores into the paper?”

I never, ever, over several years, got a good answer.

Keep reading for more on this, and for why it’s relevant today. (Hint, SB Nation just added yet another new soccer blog … can you guess what it’s about?)

I once walked into the big bosses’ office. He was in charge of sports and well-positioned politically in the newspaper. He was no fan of soccer; just another old-school type who loved his baseball and his football, etc. But he was dogged in efforts to improve circulation and readership.

So I asked for his attention. I closed the door. I explained that this was it, my last stand on this matter. He would never hear about it again from me. “Why, oh why, can’t we get this done?”

For years we had run a standard set of soccer scores every Sunday. We ran English league (the top two tiers), German Bundesliga and … wait for it … the Scottish league.

The freakin’ Scottish league!

I explained, “We probably don’t have 40 people in our readership area who give two McCrackens about the Scottish League. But we have, literally, tens of thousands with a direct link to and perhaps an abiding passion for Mexican soccer. They want the scores! At very least! They aren’t yet affixed to internet habits. The newspaper is the PERFECT way to keep tabs. It’s a wonderful way to make a connection with this demographic, to begin converting them into readers.”

I labored to convince him that soccer fans vastly outnumbered hockey fans in our community. Yes, hockey! It was a dicey gambit; telling your boss things he doesn’t want to hear always carries risk. I knew he loved hockey and abhorred the very notion of redirecting some of resources away from NHL and into soccer. I explained that perhaps the people he associates with (at the golf course and such) may not feel this way, but implored him to take a bigger view, to better understand his community.

(This was also about the time I shut the door and had another conversation, about a department of well over 100 staffers with almost no African American or Latino writers or editors … but that’s another story.)

On the matter of Mexican soccer, I thought that I got through to him. A little.

He wrote on his little notepad and promised to call AP in New York, the traditional providers of national and international reports, statistics and such.

I know others had made the same call to the Associated Press, asking how in the world we could receive Scottish League scores, but not Mexican league? (The answer, of course, was that AP wasn’t keeping up with the times either, hard-wired into its antiquated habits ... not that the folks at AP put it that way.)

So, I suppose high-level calls were made. I really don’t know. Nothing much changed.

Never mind, by the way, that we’re talking about 2005 or so. By then, pretty much anybody at our office could go find these scores on-line. The paper had plenty of people who could have chased them down. It was just a matter of directing a bit of focus in that direction.

And we did get scores from Mexico in the paper. Sometimes.

But that’s like feeding your dogs – sometimes. It doesn’t work. Consistency matters. And we were painfully inconsistent.

I received an email one day from a local restaurant manager. In an articulate, polite, impassioned note, he explained how habitually disappointed his workers were that they couldn’t find these scores – results of the teams they loved, or that their fathers loved, down in Mexico. He implored me to do something about it. “What,” he asked me, “am I supposed to tell them? They can see that the local newspaper doesn’t care enough or know enough about them to understand how much they want this tiny little trickle of information.”

I always tried to answer every email. This one, I just couldn’t. I never answered this guy, which is something I don’t feel good about. But I just didn’t’ know what to tell him. (He was certainly unaware of all my efforts along the same lines.)

The newspaper’s inability to change, its reluctance and incapability to evolve with the changing culture, was hastening a once-mighty industry’s downfall. (The example of Mexican league scores was just one tiny example, of course.) So I left.

Now the good news: The internet, as we know, has drastically altered the media world, and continues to do so.

Any Tom, Dick or Jose with a computer or smart phone can go find any information they want.

It wasn’t so long ago that someone in the Dallas area couldn’t get Mexican league scores in their local newspaper. Today there are English language blog sites devoted to the same. So, obviously, you can now find so much more than mere scores. (And obviously, there are Spanish-language sites, just as there have always been Spanish-language publications and such … but that’s beside the point.)

This week at SB Nation, FMF State of Mind came on-line. Check it out. It’s a blog site devoted to Mexican futbol news and commentary.

It’s a great development for those of us who read and speak no Spanish, or limited Spanish in my case. There are certainly enough Mexican league matches on TV. Now, it’s a little easier to follow the story lines and such.

How about that? And it’s not that far removed from a day when we couldn’t even get the damn scores.