The Daily Press

[Kenneth Harris]

The Daily Press was once a great newspaper. In the 1970s you could wake up on Saturday morning and every football score from across the state would be listed. Now? With the rise of the machines we are told that the Phantoms gave up 2 touchdowns to the Heritage Pioneers in the '22 finals and when it that glitch is pointed out no one seems to notice. Search for stories and you will find this lovely quote;

"Nov 12, 2016 — HAMPTON —
Phoebus (9-2) overcame a slow start in the first quarter to trounce Warhill 41-7 in the first round of the Group 3A East playoffs ..."

I feel like they could not show up at Darling Stadium tomorrow when the Lafayette Spartans play the King George Phantoms, not write anything and end up being the most accurate publication in America. These kids deserve a bigger and better effort. Details don't matter.

 

[CRF4Dan]

The Daily Press was once a great newspaper. In the 1970s you could wake up on Saturday morning and every football score from across the state would be listed. Now? With the rise of the machines we are told that the Phantoms gave up 2 touchdowns to the Heritage Pioneers in the '22 finals and when it that glitch is pointed out no one seems to notice. Search for stories and you will find this lovely quote;

"Nov 12, 2016 — HAMPTON —
Phoebus (9-2) overcame a slow start in the first quarter to trounce Warhill 41-7 in the first round of the Group 3A East playoffs ..."

I feel like they could not show up at Darling Stadium tomorrow when the Lafayette Spartans play the King George Phantoms, not write anything and end up being the most accurate publication in America. These kids deserve a bigger and better effort. Details don't matter.

I don't think it is confined to just the Daily Press. I hear complaints from fans about the coverage of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I honestly believe it to be a sign of the times... newspapers don't carry the weight they used to and staffs have been cut so much that it is hard from the few in the building to cover everything.

It is also an indictment on coaching staffs as well. Speaking from personal experience, you sometimes have to pull teeth to get box scores from games.

 

[numb3rs]

It's very sad and, I think, tragic for society what's happened to newspapers. I'm not really sure if anything could've prevented it with the rise of the internet. My counterintuitive idea is that newspapers should never have posted their content online and created the expectation of free content. If you want to read the newspaper, buy the physical newspaper. Newspapers could've had a limited online presence with some supplemental content designed to get people to buy the newspaper. I think this strategy would've at least slowed the decline of newspapers.

 

[Virginia HS Football Fan]

Lee Enterprises is a major culprit. They own and operate 11 newspapers throughout Virginia. The Daily Press is not one of them.

It's an organization which has had it's a lot of downs in its history as they went through Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2011. They bought out several local papers throughout the country. Now, when you try to read one of their publications here in Virginia, the differences are tiny.

And for instance, it's not all about being local anymore. We will get local stories in the Fredericksburg paper about Danville and Salem. No offense, but the far majority of people in a different area of the state could care less what's going on along Main Street in Danville just like the folks in Waynesboro could care less about how radical and extreme the government of the City of Fredericksburg is.

And once esteemed sports departments are now down to a couple of people. That's why many of them on social media rely on regular folks and schools for scores and updates because they simply don't have the manpower to cover everything that's going on these days.

The same thing has happened in radio as well. Try listening to a cluster of radio stations in a rural area of Virginia which is owned and operate by a national conglomerate. And while listening, try enjoying hearing a person you've never heard of mispronouncing a county or town/city in your local listening area.

That's how bad local media has gotten.

 

[NND Sports Fan]

I recall seeing the Daily Press in the early 80s and was floored by their amazing high school sports coverage. Saw that paper pretty regularly until sometime in the 90s. Looked at a couple of recent issues a couple years ago on newspapers.com and couldn't believe how bad things had fallen off. The Free Lance Star in Fredericksburg at one time had an awesome high school sports department. Now it's next to nothing. and any stories of games done by staff and usually published two days after the event.
A lot of that can be blamed on ridiculous early deadlines created by the death of printing plants.
Heck, I think most of Lee Enterprises papers in VA are now published only 3 times a week!

 

[Virginia HS Football Fan]

I recall seeing the Daily Press in the early 80s and was floored by their amazing high school sports coverage. Saw that paper pretty regularly until sometime in the 90s. Looked at a couple of recent issues a couple years ago on newspapers.com and couldn't believe how bad things had fallen off. The Free Lance Star in Fredericksburg at one time had an awesome high school sports department. Now it's next to nothing. and any stories of games done by staff and usually published two days after the event.
A lot of that can be blamed on ridiculous early deadlines created by the death of printing plants.
Heck, I think most of Lee Enterprises papers in VA are now published only 3 times a week!

I remember back in the early 90s when my high school won its first state title and reading all of the stories and features about our team and the other team from the other team's hometown paper. It was great.

Same thing with the 80s when we had a local team that had a lot of success and there were news articles from around the state.

Now, it's next to nothing. And you're right about The Free Lance-Star. They used to be great. I was looking through some archives a few months back and was reading some very old articles. It was commonplace where they would have a half-a-dozen writers out at games on a given Friday Night along with at least two covering each schools' playoff runs. It was great back then.

 

[Lafayette]

We had a 2x week local paper, the Virginia Gazette. Each week it had large articles on the teams here in Williamsburg snd at playoffs it had both teams offense and defense schematics. Not anymore since taken over by the Pilot/DP. Marty OBrien of the DP used to have a weekly online prediction show for the Bay Rivers District held at a different team site with their players. Not anymore. Coverage these days is simply terrible. Lafayette plays Brentsville tomorrow, I haven’t a clue what offense or defense they run!

 

[Kenneth Harris]

I don't think it is confined to just the Daily Press. I hear complaints from fans about the coverage of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I honestly believe it to be a sign of the times... newspapers don't carry the weight they used to and staffs have been cut so much that it is hard from the few in the building to cover everything.

It is also an indictment on coaching staffs as well. Speaking from personal experience, you sometimes have to pull teeth to get box scores from games.

I know and it is sad. When I was still working as a freelance reporter I went to cover a national level high school game in Maryland that was honoring veterans that had died in war. The administration, including the AD, knew I was coming. I was told upon arrival that they believed that I was only there to spy for Our Lady of Good Counsel Falcons. At first I thought they were joking around even after I told the media coach that I was a veteran. They were deadly serious and they offered no apologies. I stopped covering sports soon after this. It was very upsetting.

 

[NND Sports Fan]

Do any of you recall in the 80s when the Daily Press had the statistics packages for each district it covered on Sunday or Tuesday? Peninsula Disrict, Peanut Disrict, York River District, Tidewater Disrict, Nothern Neck District and later the Blackwater and Bay Rivers districts

 

[mike salem]

I remember going out on Saturday morning and grabbing some donuts at Krispy Kreme, and getting the Roanoke Times, making some coffee, and diving into all of the great local coverage of the games that happened the night before. Sadly, those days are long gone, gone the way of the dodo 🦤. Sounds like we all have similar sad tales. Stories we can tell the grandkids I suppose.

 

[Phoebus Fan]

DailyPress is barely a paper period. They don’t even have a department focused on HS sports anymore. Used to have HrVarsity and Dave Johnson and Lynn Burke did an amazing job. Then they replaced Dave with some lady from out of town and it went down hill. Not totally blaming her but she was terrible and would skip HS coverage to go see the Nationals play.

Now DP combined with Va Pilot to expand 757Teamz but that’s already been dedicated to the southside. They depend on schools to submit stats but none of the top schools submit their stats so they’re completely clueless

 

[Kenneth Harris]

DailyPress is barely a paper period. They don’t even have a department focused on HS sports anymore. Used to have HrVarsity and Dave Johnson and Lynn Burke did an amazing job. Then they replaced Dave with some lady from out of town and it went down hill. Not totally blaming her but she was terrible and would skip HS coverage to go see the Nationals play.

Now DP combined with Va Pilot to expand 757Teamz but that’s already been dedicated to the southside. They depend on schools to submit stats but none of the top schools submit their stats so they’re completely clueless

In 2003 they did an expose on freelance internet based reporters and did not have many nice things to say. There was not much effort on their part to ever try. The sad thing is just how wide spread this is. I feel like there were better choices that could have been made and a better way of doing things with all print media. Thank you for all if your comments.

 

[cutnjump]

Lee Enterprises is a major culprit. They own and operate 11 newspapers throughout Virginia. The Daily Press is not one of them.

It's an organization which has had it's a lot of downs in its history as they went through Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2011. They bought out several local papers throughout the country. Now, when you try to read one of their publications here in Virginia, the differences are tiny.

And for instance, it's not all about being local anymore. We will get local stories in the Fredericksburg paper about Danville and Salem. No offense, but the far majority of people in a different area of the state could care less what's going on along Main Street in Danville just like the folks in Waynesboro could care less about how radical and extreme the government of the City of Fredericksburg is.

And once esteemed sports departments are now down to a couple of people. That's why many of them on social media rely on regular folks and schools for scores and updates because they simply don't have the manpower to cover everything that's going on these days.

The same thing has happened in radio as well. Try listening to a cluster of radio stations in a rural area of Virginia which is owned and operate by a national conglomerate. And while listening, try enjoying hearing a person you've never heard of mispronouncing a county or town/city in your local listening area.

That's how bad local media has gotten.

Lee is horrible and probably deserves every criticism they get and more. However, the initial culprit is the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett. Buffett had this nostalgic fantasy of his earlier days as a paper boy and started buying up locals thinking his business acumen could streamline the industry and then restore it. One of his poorest bets ever.

As operations hemorrhaged cash and became an albatross to BH he devised his plan to unload the failing operations on Lee who was already into BH for other debt. He removed a failing operation from his balance sheet and operating statement and converted it to a financing transaction secured by underlying real estate. He now has an interest producing asset and when Lee fails again he will see the real estate that secures his loan. Meanwhile, local news in Virginia and the many that recall decent local news operations are left as a carcass picked over by management from flyover country. The kindly grandpa from the Midwest turned out to be a narcissistic shark in this case.