Victory Is Ours!

For those new to this site, the first wave of notoriety, if you will, came from a piece I wrote about the Hartford Courant removing NBA and NHL box scores from its sports pages. Check out this post for the full scoop. The gist of it was that the Courant was removing the box scores to save space and money. In response, I was quite upset that the Courant decided that box scores were expendable but seven UConn women's basketball articles were not. Ditto for those useless one paragraph description of the previous night's game, when a box score can tell you every minute detail of a contest in a small amount of space. I also questioned how eliminating a few box scores was really going to save the Courant all that much money.

Now my subscription to the Courant (and for full disclosure, I write for another newspaper in the state) had ended and I did not renew it. Why? I was mad. But on Wednesday afternoon, I sat down for lunch in a Subway and, lo and behold, there was a Hartford Courant sports section on the table. My choice was to eat my steak & cheese while staring blankly in the direction of nobody while trying to avoid eye contact or read about some sports. Look at the name of this site, you know what I did. But I was so very, very, very surprised to see the Courant had taken my advice.

For the NBA and the NHL, the Courant ran every single glorious box score with only write-ups of some games, from what I gathered the semi-local teams like the Bruins and Knicks got some of the AP recap printed. But for, say, the Flyers/Sabres game, there was just a box score and a couple quick facts about the game. It was exactly what I wrote the fans would want and they did it. Brilliant!

Now I'm not about to take credit for the change because I was far from the only one who complained. In fact, my original post on the subject focused more on the downfall of traditional print journalism because it was so out of tune with readers' wants. It did, however, get picked up or mentioned by other sites and other blogs. Other Connecticut sports fans with blogs and such made their opinion, similar to mine, known. No doubt, the Courant got the message. Here's a sampling from the Courant's 'reader representative' back in January. It's amusing because she tries to say everything's going to be okay because the Courant will still run the Celtics box score.
So obviously the box scores are back and, thanks to the Internet, I found the sports editor's pseudo-apology to sports readers on Feb. 11:

They're back. The NBA box scores and NHL summaries have returned.

You spoke and we listened.

The box scores and summaries are a way of life in the sports world, sort of like waking up to your morning coffee. So when we took them away, we heard. Plenty.

The reason we no longer printed them was because we had to reduce the amount of pages in the Sports section. That has not changed, but we have figured a way to bring them back. We will have less regular-size type on games, generally just highlighting one game a night. But the box scores, with some notes on the games, will appear. And, as you know, the box scores are packed with information.

The NBA can be found on Page E9 today. The NHL is on Page E11. On another note, CourtSide, the weekly college basketball insert in Tuesday's paper, will no longer appear. Some of that information, from features on state teams to standings and statistics, will be in the Sports section on Tuesday morning throughout the season.

Contact Jeff Otterbein at otterbein@courant.com.

So there you have it. You know what else is funny? The Courant decided to eliminate a weekly insert that was filled mostly with useless stories on women's basketball that I still maintain nobody reads. Those weren't even UConn articles, those were pieces on women's teams from out of state. Now that's an effective cut of articles people won't miss. Ten bucks says the Courant won't be deluged with complaints the coverage of SEC women's basketball has been scaled back. Newspapers acting smart...what in the name of Grantland Rice is going on here?

I still believe the Courant's initial decision to lose the box scores was short-sighted, poorly conceived and insulting. However, I must give them credit for quickly rectifying the situation and, gasp, actually listening to its consumers. You know, if this becomes a trend, people might start respecting good ol' newspapers again.

Sean O