Local Media Coverage of the Kings Playoff Clinching Victory

[Rog or Reg?]

I understand that journalism is not what it used to be, especially regarding the Los Angeles Times, but this is ridiculous.

I subscribe to a digital version of the Los Angeles Times, along with latimes.com.

In the digital version of the newspaper, on the back page, there was one paragraph about the Kings playoff clinching victory in Seattle.

On their website there was an eight paragraph article cut and pasted from the Associated Press, sandwiched between an article about high school track and field and the WNBA draft.

That's it.

That reminds me of a post I made last year when I was talking to someone about the Los Angeles sports scene and they had no idea there was a hockey team in Los Angeles.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that. I've lived another parts of the country...Dallas, DC. Chicago... and local media coverage of the Stars, Blackhawks and Capitals was much more extensive in those cities than it is here in Los Angeles, and that's a damn shame.

I was expecting to read some in-depth reporting about the Kings and I could barely even find an article. I literally had to dig and use their search engine.

Pathetic.

 

[jom]

You are shocked by this? C'mon. It's been lame media coverage for the 52 years I've followed the team. In recent years the Kings have had their "insider" stuff but "outsiders" are rare. I can really only remember two or three people in the media that really knew hockey. Alan Malamud, Stu Nahan and more recently Helene Elliot. After that it was mis-pronunciation of the player's names, clueless game coverage and other non-sense.

This should all be well known by now....

jom

 

[Clif]

Apart from “state run” Insider, Kings media is entirely propped up by podcasts. There are a few high quality podcasts, a couple others with good production quality but boring hosts I can’t handle, and a few others that are utterly unlistenable.

You have to hand it to Jesse for hosting a post game call in show after every single game. And then he uploads the shows the next day. It’s actually more than I can get through.

I love the Bannermen, and admittedly they say things I already agree with most of the time. KOTP is entertaining and I like to love/hate it. I’d miss those clowns if they were gone.

 

[Rog or Reg?]

You are shocked by this? C'mon. It's been lame media coverage for the 52 years I've followed the team. In recent years the Kings have had their "insider" stuff but "outsiders" are rare. I can really only remember two or three people in the media that really knew hockey. Alan Malamud, Stu Nahan and more recently Helene Elliot. After that it was mis-pronunciation of the player's names, clueless game coverage and other non-sense.

This should all be well known by now....

jom

Not necessarily shocked, just disappointed.

I can guarantee when a major league sports team clinches a playoff spot, other cities would at least have a reporter covering it and publish a decent article. Or two.

The LA Times is one of the largest 'newspapers' in the country, and we get virtually nothing about one of our major league sports teams advancing to the playoffs.

I miss Helene more everyday. She was a good reporter, she understood hockey, and did a fine job covering the Kings. So she's gone and now we're just neglected?

This is BS.

 

[Rogie-Vachon]

The Los Angeles Times isn't even a bare bones fish wrap.
No beat writers for NHL (at all)
No beat writers for the Angels (a major league team)
They only cover: Dodgers, Lakers, Rams, USC. They barely cover: Clippers, Chargers, UCLA.
They'll send the soccer guy (Kevin Baxter) to home NHL playoff games.
Everything else is AP reports.... and the game recaps are a day late.
Deadline is apparently 9:00 pm...so any night games you get 24 hours later.
The late, great JIM HEALY - who used to call the Times sports section "The World Champion" - would be embarrassed on far this rag has fallen.

BTW - can you guess the mistake in this small blurb about the Ducks clinching?

 

[Pevsfreedom]

Kopidor, Doty, and the Sacramento Kings headed back to the NHL playons!

 

[JC6388LAKings]

I don't even read the LA Times since I get my sports news sources from other sites so this isn't surprising. What else is new?

 

[Rogie-Vachon]

Kopidor, Doty, and the Sacramento Kings headed back to the NHL playons!

 

[Rog or Reg?]

That's freaking hilarious!

Reminds me of a conversation I had with someone that was supposedly a knowledgeable sports fan.

I told him how often I go to the Kings games and he said, "So, you fly up to Sacramento a lot, eh?"

I told him that was a basketball team in Sacramento and the Kings are a hockey team here in Los Angeles and he said "Oh, there's two Kings teams?"

 

[Moog]

Your talking about a very niche sport.
Add to that a niche sport in Los Angeles.

Trying to compare sports coverage in LA vs Dallas, DC, Chicago?
You serious?

Sports for most people in LA is somewhere way down the list of what they are interested in or concerned about. There is just too much going on in the lives of LA/SoCal peeps to put sports up at the top of the list.

LA is a VERY different market/demographic for media coverage (especially sports) when compared to the markets mentioned above.

In those markets the demo is very interested in sports, because you are living in places where sports is the only/ biggest thing going on in people's lives.


Other than diehards, LA peeps are not that concerned about sports, unless its a top 4 sport, and that team is playing in a championship game. NHL is not top 4 in sports, and the Kings have not played in a Championship for over a decade.

Add to all that, who reads the paper anymore?

 

[HeadInjury]

Hockey is a niche sport in LA (compared to the Dodgers, Lakers and Rams), but the LA Times is a niche paper. My dad still subscribes, but he's 93. Local TV and papers are the last place I'd look for any sports coverage these days.

 

[tokyoking]

You are shocked by this? C'mon. It's been lame media coverage for the 52 years I've followed the team. In recent years the Kings have had their "insider" stuff but "outsiders" are rare. I can really only remember two or three people in the media that really knew hockey. Alan Malamud, Stu Nahan and more recently Helene Elliot. After that it was mis-pronunciation of the player's names, clueless game coverage and other non-sense.

This should all be well known by now....

jom

Loved it when Stu would talk about hockey

 

[Rogie-Vachon]

Loved it when Stu would talk about hockey

That's "Silver Tip" Stu

 

[Rog or Reg?]

That's "Silver Tip" Stu

I got to meet Stu on June 5th '93 at The Forum during the first Stanley Cup Final ever played in Los Angeles. Super nice guy. About 2 minutes later I got to meet Marcel Dionne...got his autograph on my ticket stub.

I loved Stu, and he was a massive Kings fan.

 

[Rog or Reg?]

Hockey is a niche sport in LA (compared to the Dodgers, Lakers and Rams), but the LA Times is a niche paper. My dad still subscribes, but he's 93. Local TV and papers are the last place I'd look for any sports coverage these days.

Well I'm not quite 90 years old yet (I'm in my 60s) but I still like reading the newspaper in the morning, even if it's digital, although the quality of their journalism has dwindled over the years.

 

[Rog or Reg?]

Your talking about a very niche sport.
Add to that a niche sport in Los Angeles.

Trying to compare sports coverage in LA vs Dallas, DC, Chicago?
You serious?

Sports for most people in LA is somewhere way down the list of what they are interested in or concerned about. There is just too much going on in the lives of LA/SoCal peeps to put sports up at the top of the list.

LA is a VERY different market/demographic for media coverage (especially sports) when compared to the markets mentioned above.

In those markets the demo is very interested in sports, because you are living in places where sports is the only/ biggest thing going on in people's lives.


Other than diehards, LA peeps are not that concerned about sports, unless its a top 4 sport, and that team is playing in a championship game. NHL is not top 4 in sports, and the Kings have not played in a Championship for over a decade.

Add to all that, who reads the paper anymore?

Sometimes it's easy to forget not everybody enjoys the same things I enjoy. In my orbit, everyone I know watches football, hockey and baseball.

Back in the day our corporation had season tickets to the Rams, Raiders, Dodgers and Lakers. After the football teams bailed, we were down to just the Dodgers and Lakers, but in the mid-80s we dumped the Lakers for the Kings (right before we got Gretzky). Then it was just the Dodgers and the Kings.

Reminds me of when I moved back to Maryland in the late 90s to build a new stadium for the Washington Redskins when work was slow in LA. The stadium project in Laurel fell through and was delayed a year and eventually built in Landover. So I worked on a biotech lab and a subway back there. But while I was waiting in the union hall for a job I started asking some fellow electricians about the new stadium, assuming that everyone was a sports fan.

The answers I got surprised me:

"Who are the Redskins?"
"What stadium?"
"Is that the baseball team?"

Not everyone follows sports, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when people didn't know who the LA Kings were.

It's like my friends that watch TV and know all the shows. I haven't watched TV shows since I was a teenager and I have no idea what the popular shows are, which surprises a lot of people.

To each his own.

Yeah, I guess hockey is a niche sport. But I'm still surprised there wasn't more coverage in the Times on the Kings making the playoffs. The Lakers and the Dodgers absolutely dominate the sports section. But I haven't watched a basketball game for 25 years.

 

[jom]

Loved it when Stu would talk about hockey

A lot of people don't know that Stu was the first play-by-play announcer for the Flyers.

jom

 

[ICE24]

I get all my NHL news here on the mighty 690 or Let's Go Kings

 

[Statue4Deano]

 

[DoubleMinor]

Your talking about a very niche sport.
Add to that a niche sport in Los Angeles.

Trying to compare sports coverage in LA vs Dallas, DC, Chicago?
You serious?

Sports for most people in LA is somewhere way down the list of what they are interested in or concerned about. There is just too much going on in the lives of LA/SoCal peeps to put sports up at the top of the list.

LA is a VERY different market/demographic for media coverage (especially sports) when compared to the markets mentioned above.

In those markets the demo is very interested in sports, because you are living in places where sports is the only/ biggest thing going on in people's lives.


Other than diehards, LA peeps are not that concerned about sports, unless its a top 4 sport, and that team is playing in a championship game. NHL is not top 4 in sports, and the Kings have not played in a Championship for over a decade.

Add to all that, who reads the paper anymore?

Add to all of this, LA is a notoriously fickle sports fan base (lots of competition for entertainment budgets) and while every sport does have their diehards, LA fans are mostly front runners who only pay attention when they can pose as “true fans” at championship time, but most don’t know jack about sports.