RLewis wrote:Spud wrote:Ron,
I have read your post above - you completely contradict yourself as you in your original post you write the best chance for boxing is to get stuff in the national press amongst other things - then you write above how terribly difficult and unrealistic things to get things past your editor.
You then proceed to state you have to do what your boss tells you - what about some of you doing what all the internet writers do - prove your passion for the sport - by driving to the venue at your own expense - pay for your own hotel and pen your own article and then show your boss what you have done off your own back in your own time.
Its all too easy for the journalists like your original post to tell us fans what we have to do to improve boxing yet - you as journalists are not prepared to do anything yourselves!!!
Time and time again I have seen Bunce at venues and being the only national press writer there writing articles for various "Sundays" or monday papers - or doing a favour for another journalist.
My passion for the sport? I started writing about boxing when I was 15, paying to get into shows and sending off reports to my local paper.
I'm not prepared to do anything myself? How insulting is that. You have no idea how hard I work. I bet I watch more live fights than Steve, or you. I can't remember the last time I saw Steve ringside, unless he was working for BBC Radio or Setanta. But it's not a competition, I get to as many shows as I can, whether I'm going to get anything in the paper or not. Don't believe me? Ask some of the journos on here from Boxing News or spam.
pay for your own hotel and pen your own article and then show your boss what you have done off your own back in your own time
Do you have any idea how newspapers work? It's not a student magazine. And it's not a matter of "paying for a hotel". I've done plenty of 200-mile trips for a fights I have no chance of getting more than 50 words in the paper. But get real, it's a job, not a hobby.
I tell you what I did today in "my own time". I wrote the latest part of my top 50 light-heavyweights of all time for my blog. That took bloody hours. Then I went and did a 7-hour evening subbing shift in the office. Tomorrow I've got another evening shift, but I'll be chasing up to England amateurs after the weekend's four nations tournament in Dublin, and probably phoning round a bunch of promoters, even though, with The Ashes starting on Wednesday and Wimbledon and Lions round-ups and only an 11-page sports section, there is zero chance of it making the paper.
There are only two world title fights in Britain I have missed in the past 5 years. Clinton Woods v Rico Hoye, which had a start time of 11.45pm, when my paper's final edition that night had a deadline of 11.30pm. And Clinton Woods v Jason De Lisle, which clashed with a Hatton-Collazo fight where I was. All your views seem based in about 2003, not the present day.
What I find so sadly typical of your reply, is that I give a genuine first-hand account of working of newspapers and you come back with a load of deep-seated prejudices. "Journalists all just want to go to Vegas", "they're all in Warren's pocket". As I presume I know all the national newspaper writers better than you, I can guarantee you that is not true. I certainly make an effort to get on with and treat all promoters equally. At the end of the day, it's about the fighters not the promoters. And as often as not, a boxing writer will lose out on a Vegas trip so the chief sports writer can go.
I don't really understand how I am meant to have contradicted myself. My original point was that the people that matter at newspapers and broadcasters need to know that there is demand for boxing. I tell them that on a daily basis.
You didn't contradict yourself Ron. You gave an honest and erudite insight into the realities of a boxing/minority sport writer.
But Spud believes his knowledge of the realities of life as a boxing journo is greater than that of an actual boxing journo because he's handed out some press passes at a dozen events.
In the same way Ron, you wouldn't understand what its like to be in the army from watching M.A.S.H. but the difference is, you don't claim to.
Spud you're being a prat again.
Newspapers respond to demand. Football sells, boxing has marginalised itself Spud - jumping up and down and shouting like a five year old in Asda wont help, it will get you noticed, noticed for your poor behaviour, bad manners and lack of discipline - which is a good summary of what's wrong with boxing if your either a TV company or a Newspaper.
Until boxing makes sense of its own confusing abyss of belts, bodies and weights it will never be a mainstream sport again. Crickey we've had 4 of the most visible, recognisable faces in British Boxing history in Audley, Hatton, Calzaghe and Khan - tell me how many of your mates would tell you what weight the latter three fought at?
Tell me if they'd know whether they we're world champions with what body and could they tell you two of their opponents?
I'll tell you they'd struggle - so why the fkk would a national trouble itself with boxers beyond these headline grabbers?
Do you know who the European Table Tennis Champion is? Do you know who the World Indoor Bowls Champion is? Do you know who won the Irish Snooker Open?
Why should you?
Look at tennis, we all get in a flap for Wimbledon, tell me who's the best mixed doubles pair, who won the Australian Womens Doubles?
Boxing is your sport Spud, you cannot make the world embrace it just by shouting loud.
You have to look at WHY its not in the Newspapers, not WHY IT SHOULD BE?
And the reason is, its an organisational mess.
And we all contributed to that mire when we recognised people who never won a world title fight or beaten a world champion as a world champion themselves.
Boxing sold its soul to the sanctioning bodies and to the satellite companies, its just taken a generation for the effect to hit home.
And with so many baubles around, there are so many easy-to-navigate routes to a belt where you build up regionalised support for your star attraction, Khan, Calzaghe, Hatton. Most fight cards featuring the fighters who actually interest the national media are processions, a 10 fight list of 10-0 fighters versus 4-34 fighters from Lithuania.
Boring. Fkking boring.
Look at the extra coverage the Prizefighter concept has earned; WHY?
Because its simple to understand and they're all even scraps.