I don't disagree trane, it's logical. But it's tough to boil writing for a mass audience down to the technical side of the game, because most haven't been following it for 30 years. Heck, I see comments here from hardcores on tactics that make me wonder what game they just watched.
Plus, the average reader, newspapers have always believed, has a general interest in everything, not a special interest in one area. So while they compartmentalize news to try to get people to the area of a paper they most like, the actual writing on a particular subject is still geared to the general audience.
It's one of print news' many shortcomings compared to the new models being developed online. Whether they'll come about and realize newspapers are just silos of information, like anything else, is for time to tell, I guess.
The other issue is that long-time sportswriters fall into patterns of coverage, as in "time to haul out the 'you can't keep firing coaches" angle, or the "you can't fix problems midway through the season" angle. They think these are truisms that apply to all sports, when usually they simply haven't been taught to broaden and illuminate the angles within their beat, because they've never been news reporters.
You can go a long way in sports by just sticking to the tried-and-trued, which is why most of it is pretty formulaic.
Unfortunately, in terms of having mass audience "pickup" on issues simply because they're in media play, that horse left the barn about two decades ago. Since the widespread adoption of the web, people have discovered they're quite content to have content fed to them instead of deciding on the menu.
As as result, they're glutted on informational junk food and absolutely starved of any contextual understanding of what important news even consists of anymore.
A sexual assualt in a city of a million people will get front-section play in a newspaper and 100 people will leave comments after the story, as if this particular case is likely to ever impact them, or as if the article contained broader information on personal safety or the social status of combatting the problem. We'll get calls from anxious parents; and half the people reading will let the broad "shock" nature of it impact their political perspective, because it matches up with the "easy answer" nature of the ideological divide.
The world's a very complex place full of very simple people. They don't do complicated; whether deliberate or just a natural rebalancing, the people on the top of the social pyramid are rearranging the deck chairs with respect to news media to give people what they want (and will support with ad dollars) not what they need.
There's always, as a long-term consequence, some balance to that. Down the line, you'll see a return at some point to the commercially viable possibilities of long-form daily reporting, context, important, good editing, stirling writing etc.
But we're about as far from it right now as a society is likely to get.
All of which means you're not likely to get exceptional MLS coverage anywhere any time soon.
Serbian Red Star fans set fire to partizan stadium LOL.
Agreed.
trane is looking for something like Gazzetta but that's never going to happen in a daily. Hell, it doesn't even happen for hockey in Toronto. You'll get a recap and maybe a columnist offering his opinion on the game/players/other storyline.
The mentality is "I saw the game, I don't need you to break it down for me. But if I do, I'll go to other mediums."