R.I.P. Sports Page

It's RIP Sports Page as two of the biggest newspapers announce the end of the daily sports section.

Remember reading every word of the newspaper sports page--in the printed newspaper? Camp Codger hosts Richard Kipling and Randy Schultz sure do. The sports page (also known as the sports section) was the first part of the daily newspaper they read. (For host Gary Ebersole, not so much. He was never a fan of the sports page because he was never a real fan of sports.)

Well folks, it's RIP Sports Page as the New York Times has announced it will disband its sports department and cease its daily sports pages. The Los Angeles Times made a similar announcement.

This means neither newspaper will publish sports scores, game results, league standings, baseball box scores, football scores, soccer results, basketball playoff results, hockey scores-- or sporting events of any kind. For Richard and Randy, this is the end of life as they know it.

Hey Sports Page, Where Are My Box Scores?

If you are a baseball fan, you understand the subhead above. Box scores are the detailed (and arcane) way of using a chart to summarize what happened in a baseball game.

In a tiny amount of space on a newspaper page, the box score of a baseball game tells you everyone who played in the game and what they did-- at bats, hits, runs scored, runs batted in. Plus how many runs were scored in each inning and what the final score of the game was. It's brilliant--and avid fans love to read the box scores for their favorite teams.

But if you are a baseball fan in New York or Los Angeles, you can't read box scores in the newspapers anymore. This will soon happen in other cities. Just watch.

Newspapers Aren't Dead... Yet

Printed newspapers aren't completely dead yet. There are still hundreds of daily newspapers in the US that have daily sports pages. It's not R.I.P. Sports Pages for those newspapers. At least not yet.

But the death of daily sports coverage in printed newspapers is coming. Unfortunately, it's another step in the steady decline of traditional newspapers as online news sources take over.

Gary admits to being an early convert to digital news reading. He dropped his subscription to the printed newspaper a decade ago.

Richard, who spent decades as a print journalist and editor, says on this episode of Camp Codger, "Online has utterly conquered print in the sports information contest." Randy agrees, admitting that "MLB scores" is a frequent Google search on his phone.

For the Camp Codger hosts, daily newspapers are "throwing in the towel" (did you catch that clever sports reference?) on sports coverage. And it's another giant step in the steady march downward for traditional newspapers.

Beyond the RIP for Sports Pages

Even if you're not a sports fan, listen to this episode of Camp Codger. Randy reads a letter written by ChatGPT about the Camp Codger podcast. This fan letter, written by a computer, is so gushingly funny that Randy can't read it without laughing out loud.

It's so heart-warming when a computer program like ChatGPT finds humor and comfort from a podcast as human and folksy as Camp Codger!

To listen to this episode, just click on the "Play Episode" triangle above.

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