LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- I can't hear of a newspaper dying without feeling a peculiar kind of pain, followed quickly by a moment of nostalgia.
And the latest news from AP — that The Washington Post has eliminated its Sports department — hits hard.
Think about that. The Washington Post — once home to Shirley Povich, Dave Kindred, Tony Kornheiser, Sally Jenkins, Tom Boswell and Michael Wilbon — no longer has a sports section. It's not just a business move. It's a cultural milestone.
The Voices That Shaped Us
I always encourage young people interested in this strange job I have to read as many great sportswriters as they can find. That's easier now than it used to be.
Back in the day, I made weekly pilgrimages to the Hawley-Cooke bookstore on Shelbyville Road to flip through the Sunday papers. They were stacked on a long wooden shelf near the front of the store: The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and others.
That shelf was my internet.
And it held voices: Bernie Lincicome, Furman Bisher, Kornheiser, Wilbon, Kindred, Jim Murray, Alan Malamud, Dave Anderson. Metro giants like Mike Royko, Louis Grizzard, Bob Greene, Dave Barry.
At home, I grew up reading Billy Reed and Rick Bozich in The Courier-Journal, along with many other great writers, too numerous to mention, including my dad, Byron Crawford — and I was lucky enough to eventually work alongside many of them.
When I started as a clerk at The C-J, I had access to the wire services, and could read those national writers every day — especially Kornheiser. It felt like holding a passport to something special.
I could go on. And maybe I already have. But here's the thing.
It's a strange feeling to see a place you once dreamed of working begin to vanish.
What's changed: The three pressures
1. Audience behavior
The way people consume stories has changed. One morning last week, I checked our web traffic report. The top seven news stories averaged 29 seconds of reader time. That's actually strong in today's climate. My two Louisville basketball columns? Just under a minute each, and I'm grateful for that.
But that's the fight now. Getting — and holding — someone's attention for even a minute.
More often, the attention goes elsewhere: short-form clips, podcasts, video snippets. That's where the eyes go. And where the money goes with them.
It's why you see more journalists producing those, trying to meet people where they are.
2. Business reality
I started my career at The Evansville Press, an afternoon paper. I was there on its final day, watching the last edition roll off the press. It was a formative lesson: Even great work doesn't matter if no one's reading it, if the delivery doesn't match the audience, or can't pay its own way.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down. The L.A. Times has already been hollowed out. The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, had already cut Olympics travel and reduced on-the-ground coverage. Now, it has taken the final step — eliminating its sports department entirely.
It's hard to believe, but easier to understand if you've seen the spreadsheets. Or my latest expense report from covering Indiana's run to the College Football Playoff championship.
And I have to acknowledge, I contributed in a small way to the drain. I left newspapers, along with Bozich, in 2012 to join a TV station and its website. Some people thought we were crazy. But it gave us a longer runway to keep doing what we love: writing about sports.
3. Technology and the flood
Now we're watching a new wave roll in. Generative AI is beginning to undercut web traffic. Some outlets are even experimenting with AI-generated stories in place of human bylines.
Meanwhile, social media has become a megaphone with a broken filter. I scroll through Facebook and see more fake stories than real ones, and the fake ones get more attention. A made-up post about Louisville basketball players singing the national anthem got more engagement than any real coverage of the team.
And real news outlets, under pressure, flood the platform with actual reporting, trying to shout above the noise, while often lending credibility to the noise.
What still matters
I do still believe.
There's still great sports writing out there. Chuck Culpepper's piece on Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza (in the Washington Post, I should add) and his family was one of the best things I've read in a while. Sally Jenkins, a longtime voice at The Post, has taken her work to The Atlantic. The Athletic is thriving under New York Times ownership (which shuttered its own Sports section when it bought the online publication).
Fan sites have figured out something legacy media is still chasing: It's not just about reporting. It's about building community. Kentucky Sports Radio, under Matt Jones, has done that (though even he sold the digital wing to On3 Sports). Mike Rutherford at CardChronicle.com has done it. So have folks covering Indiana, like Alex Bozich at InsideTheHall.com.
It can be done. It's being done.
What Comes Next?
Maybe there's no more newspaper shelf. Hawley-Cooke is long gone. Websites come and go. Everyone is fishing for the right combination, even as the waters are always changing.
Still, I remember what it felt like to pick up those papers, fresh and folded, and find someone inside trying to make sense of a game, a season, a city.
There's something sacred about that, about making sense of what we see and sharing it with someone else. And I worry that while there may be more voices than ever flooding the space, there are fewer voices we trust.
I don't know where this business goes from here. But I hope there's still a kid out there who stumbles onto something that makes them say, “I want to do this.”
Whatever form it takes.
More Coffee with Crawford:
Coffee with Crawford | Jeff Walz has Louisville women back in the top 10 and looking for more
Coffee with Crawford | A different winter: On the road with Indiana's championship detour
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