Bergstein Throws Down
 

I thought the newspaper industry was dying? :rolleyes:

DRF is up to like 8 bucks or something offtrack, right? Gotta pay the bills

Yeah, I fondly remember the days The Form was under a buck.

I agree that racing has to get back in the mainstream press but Lionel Messi is an exceptional Soccer player. The biggest game of the soccer season is this Saturday. Ignorant example by the writer.

And gas was 30 cents a gallon.

And people believed the same misinformation you're still buying in horse racing.

Those were the days.

'Bergstein throws down'

Readers throw up.

This article is really all over the place. I don't think he has one single point to make. There is no focus.

I remember the days you could go to the movies for 25 cents and see two with cartoons between the shows.:D

It seems like it was yesterday.

Racing received a lot more newspaper coverage 20 years ago. However, 20 years ago, we didn't have quality radio and TV programming like At The Races or the National Racing Report. I'll take the present.

I remember my Mom sending me clippings from the NYT when I was away in school, always racing articles. (Sweet Mom, sent articles but clipped and saved photos, she hated to fold them.) Post college I subscribed to the TB Record (soon to be TTimes) and read the weekly magazine though by the time I got it the "news" was a week old. I watched the old WOR show with Charlsie Cantey and Frank Wright religiously. Racing was more mainstream then (every Saturday afternoon, in the NYT 2x a week) but if I wanted to bet I had to go someplace and buy a DRF and then go to an OTB that most folks didn't consider a decent place for a young woman to spend the afternoon.

Access to racing and racing info is far easier today. No it's only a feature in the NYT during the Triple Crown and then usually gets more negative than positive press, no it's not on cable TV for an hour from NY every week and yes, many OTB's are still not places for young ladies, but...

I can get PP's downloaded on my desktop and printed at my convenience. I can watch a replay of almost any race I want to see. I can archive millions of records on my computer. Between OTB-TV (which wasn't simulcasting in the good old days) and live streaming video I can watch alot of racing, and racing of my choice any day of the week.

Sports, like much of life today is very segmented. No longer does something need to be "mainstream" to be available widely. When my Mom was clipping out articles about Winter's Tale and Peat Moss the NYT was the gold standard in information distribution. Today I can get racing dailies via email, world news via hundreds of outlets and if I want to know how the races went at Happy Valley last night I can open the South China Morning Post on my Blackberry, while listening to ATR on the way to work.

This argument is similar to what happens after the BC every year. When viewership declines thenetwork moans and people come here and talk about the game being in trouble. Then the handle figs come out and they're UP! Well the network execs look at viewership and it's relationship to ad revenue. It's not that people are not watching the races, they are viewing in simulcast form at their local track or OTB, which is also a relatively new arrival. I remember going to an OTB, betting all the BC races then going home to watch the races because the OTB couldn't show them!

There's a very easy solution. Don't read the New York Times.

As bad as Bergstein's article is, this gem from Ray Kerrison may be worse.

http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/horse...VIRQMKWK1QHECM

Shackleford has a "record of stopping like a two-dollar watch in the stretch"? He went to the old folderoo act in the Derby? He folded in the Florida Derby? Wonder if Kerrison saw any of Shackleford's races prior to the Derby.

Unfortunately horse racing does not get many articles written in the sports section of most major papers, but it is really disconcerting to see this type of garbage fill what little space it can get.