In the latest instalment of her "Backstory" series, Gill Moodie writes exclusively for journalism.co.za:

 Does sport still sell newspapers today, when sports fans can get up-to-the-minute updates and coverage of the big events on TV, radio, online and on their cellphones?

Although kind to the advertising coffers of most papers in SA, the 2010 Soccer World Cup surprised many by not delivering the anticipated circulation increases for newspapers during that time while TV-viewership figures hit record highs. And the editors of Rapport and the Sunday Times – Bokkie Gerber and Ray Hartley – told Journalism.co.za that last year’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand didn’t do much for the sales of the two papers either.

So is it still worth running with a big soccer or rugby game on the front page on Sunday when everyone knows the result on Saturday?  

These are the thoughts that occupy editors’ minds today when weighing up the stories from their news, political and sports teams at news conferences – especially at the Sunday papers, which have traditionally traded on tapping into the deep passion that South Africans hold for their favourite sports.

In October last year, says Gerber – a veteran Rapport sports editor himself – he made the unusual decision to splash with a hard-news story instead of the Currie Cup rugby final that was between the Johannesburg-based Lions and the Durban-based Sharks. The complaints came flooding in, especially from Lions supporters who felt that Rapport had let the side down by not trumpeting their win over the Sharks. (For Rapport, the big rugby teams in Pretoria and Cape Town, the Blue Bulls and the Stormers, are the biggest sellers.)

In retrospect, says Gerber, it wasn’t a good call. The New Zealand World Cup didn’t do much for the paper, he says, because the match times often meant that South Africans were at home or in pubs watching the rugby on Sunday mornings instead of being out and about, picking up newspapers.  

This has reaffirmed for Gerber that sports – and rugby in particular – is still an absolutely key ingredient in his newspaper’s content mix.

“The internet and television (coverage), as far as I’m concerned, creates interest. But we’ve got to steer away from match reporting or just giving results... Apart from breaking big sports news stories, I think opinion is the main thing. Your readers still like to compare their views of their teams to that of a well-known rugby or soccer writer. It’s a talking point on the Sunday so I think sports is still very important.”

Hartley echoes this view at the Sunday Times, where the big sports are (domestic) soccer, cricket and rugby (in that order – for Rapport readers, cricket comes in at second place).

“You’ve got to bring something else to the party like a big-name columnist... People aren’t out and about buying newspapers in great numbers when there’s a big sporting event (like a World Cup) on but if you have the analysis and the opinion on their favourite sport in the paper, they might make an effort to go and buy it,” Hartley says.

“Some of the British broadsheets are very good at producing these writers that write essays that are quite contrarian and provocative and very nicely written. And that’s what we’re striving to do. We’ve created a space called ‘The Big Read’ in our sports section and the idea is to give our journalists a place to do that kind of writing – to be provocative. You’re not in a politically correct space so you’re able to use language very freely – I think that’s something that can be done a lot better.”

Even at regional papers, it seems, where there is an appetite for news on local leagues and clubs, analysis “that confirms or challenges” what readers feel about a big sports event still has currency, says Brendan Boyle, the editor of the East London-based Daily Dispatch, where soccer, boxing, cricket and rugby are the big sellers.

To illustrate the power of this, Boyle recalls his early days at the Cape Argus, where copies of the paper would be given to sports fans streaming out of the stadium after a big rugby game carrying the story of the game they had just watched. “People spend so much time rehashing it – ‘Did you see that goal and what did you think of that pass?’,” Boyle says. “I think there is still a huge appetite for dissecting their sports – just as they talk about it when they get to work, they can have that conversation with their newspaper.”

But he also points out that gauging what readers want in terms of editorial is not an exact science – even when you are studying daily sales reports as, sometimes, street sales are affected by such random things as weather, traffic flow or the quality of a particular street seller.

It is when you don’t carry something – such as when the Dispatch dropped the racing results in its recent Matric results edition – and the complaints come in, that you start to look at a particular part of the complex puzzle that is the content mix of a newspaper in a new light.

“We had several angry calls and letters (about the racing being dropped) so that’s a fairly strong indication,” Boyle says. “But with these things, you never know how many people they speak for. If you get something wrong in the stock market, you’ll get four or five calls. Now are these all of the four or five people who read the stock-market pages or do they represent a majority out there?”

So what makes a great sports story for an editor when he or she is deciding what will go on the front page of the paper?

Hartley says: “I think sports is natural human-interest territory because it’s always stories of achievement and endeavour and often about overcoming – of making something and getting somewhere... I think that the big sports are always newsworthy. People are very protective of their sports and people get very animated when their sports are being mal-administered because these sports are funded by ticket sales and people watching them on TV.”

“It’s not a question of when the Stormers play the Bulls, that you will sell. You’ve got to have a bit of drama as well,” says Gerber. “I think it helps when our sister daily papers (Beeld, Die Burger and Volksblad) do the build-up to the Saturday.. And then if there’s drama – like (spectator) Piet Potchefstroom running on to the field to tackle the referee at that Test in Durban (in 2002) or you have a (controversial ref like) Bryce Lawrence in the World Cup – that’s part of the drama.”

 For more:

‘It was always set to be an unusual World Cup’, Journalism.co.za, July 2010

‘Weighing the cost and value of world cup coverage’, Bizcommunity, July 2010

‘Citizen sports coverage, Danish style’, Editors’ Weblog, August 2011