Editor’s Preface

Abstract

Editor’s Preface Howard Schlossberg, Editor/JSM This is officially my first edition of Journal of Sports Media and I can’t tell you how excited I am. This issue is full of enriching and groundbreaking stuff for which the journal has become noted under founding Editor Brad Schultz. There’s not enough room here for me to do an adequate job thanking Brad sufficiently enough for stewarding this thing through from birth. He was kind enough to make me a part of the founding Editorial Advisory Board and to allow me to handle coordinating book reviews. All that said, I have no intention of taking the journal anywhere that Brad would not have. The informational value will remain the same, the goals the same, the output the same. I’m a career sportswriter-turned-professor and I still practice both so I maintain a keen interest in advances and trends in the ways sports are reported and the research that evaluates and tracks it while also identifying where it’s going and maybe just how long it may take to get there. (Yes, I believe “sportswriter” is one word, with all credit due to the great Frank Deford.) I’m not looking for the next great groundbreaking piece on sportswriting trends though. That’s what you’re looking for. I’m just the conduit to get it out there. Like me, you are not only sports fans but “fans” of how it’s reported and why it went in that direction. It drives you. Fuels you. Makes you hoard information, save everything relative and clip holes in newspaper sports sections. It makes you ask questions. So I’m asking a question now, and that’s for you to keep asking about sports coverage, how it got where it is and where it’s going. And why. What technologies are driving it and what people are driving those technologies. Who’s the next Roone Arledge and who’s the next, dare I say it, Keith Olbermann, Jim Gray and/or (Deadspin’s) A. J. Daulerio? I’m not the only inquiring mind out there that wants to know. So let’s [End Page vii] go find ’em. Well, you do that. I’ll help and I’ll distribute too. You guys play power forward and shooting guard and I’ll play point guard, OK? One last thing: I could’ve written this in the last edition, in which Brad sort of transitioned over to me. But because of the great work he’s done and will continue to do, I couldn’t bring myself to write an initial preface as editor in an edition for which he solicited, edited and supervised all that appears. I would not rain on his parade. So, enjoy reading about the World Wide Web and the spider web that’s swallowing up traditional newspaper sports coverage in this issue. Enjoy discovering how Tiger Woods did himself in (did he ever) when he initially came back and even more about how new media is driving all of us in traditional media to be more adaptive, insightful and critical in our reporting. I know I am. Reach me directly with any questions or concerns. I’m at 312-369-8904 at the Journalism Department at Columbia College or am reachable by email at hbssports@gmail.com or hschlossberg@colum.edu. And no cheering in the press box. [End Page viii] Howard Schlossberg, Editor/JSM Columbia College Chicago Copyright © 2012 University of Nebraska Press