#4: Fix The Media

Er.  Yeah.  That’d be us.  Prior to the launch of this website, news coverage of Long Beach sports (by local outlets) was limited to the Press Telegram (whose budget implosions are well-documented), a broadcast of one game a week on Ed.Tv, and… that was pretty much it.  This is, as we’ve mentioned previously, one of America’s largest cities, with a larger population than Miami, which has five newspapers covering local sports (and two more that print in Spanish), three TV stations, and two radio stations keeping up on local action.  Granted, we suffer from the fact that we’re in the shadow of Los Angeles—the bigger publications and TV stations up there don’t recognize LB as important enough to cover regularly (how many Long Beach State articles have you read in the Times, or how many Poly highlights have you seen on NBC broadcasts?), and few have ventured to start new enterprises that are local-grown, because of the myth that LB is just an LA suburb and not, you know, bigger than Miami.

But for all its evils, the fact is that the media drives sports.  How much easier is it to follow college football or get excited about NFL playoff matchups because ESPN helps to build hype, as well as showing games and providing highlights?  The job of the media is to keep the community apprised of what’s going on, help them get to know their teams and players, and (in the digital age) to bring some highlights and excitement to the table.  There are 14 teams at Long Beach State (not counting the excellent club teams), and there are 21 sports (participated in by seven high schools) in the Moore League.  Not counting youth sports (like the World Champion LB PONY team), pro teams like the Armada, and special events like the Grand Prix and the marathon, that’s a total of over 150 teams competing in the area, all of whom have a story, all of whom the community deserves to know about.  Even if the PT returned to its glory days, and we were able to quintuple our video highlights, game writeups, and podcast episodes, Long Beach would still be about halfway to where it should be. 

So: anyone want to go halfsies on an LB Sports TV channel?