There is an old saw among journalists that “nobody cares if the hotdogs are cold in the pressbox.” It means to keep your petty, personal gripes out of the story and only report matters of interest to the public.
On Saturday night, the hotdogs were far from cold in the pressbox at the Savvis Center, as far as the St. Louis American was concerned. That is to say, our every request for media credentials was honored, and our reporters and columnists had almost the best seats in the house.
Almost the best seats. And there is a story in that almost, which goes beyond any petty, personal complaints to comment on the media climate in this city.
You see, the very best seats in the house n the first-row seats along media row n went to reporters and columnists for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Let’s say again before this goes too far: everyone from this paper reporting on the fight could see every grimace on the face of every boxer on the card. We could hear the near cornermen screaming at their fighters. We did everything but taste the blood that was spilled. We were in a perfect position to report on the fights.
So why bother to take the temperature of the hotdogs in the pressbox? Because the Savvis Center missed a chance to make a public and important point to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
In private, Savvis Center officials said to us what everyone in town n including Post staffers, who were gracious enough (in some cases) to tip their hats to us n knew and knows: that the American was the first media outlet in town to embrace this fight as a major event, and our relentless coverage of the fight was an essential in putting Cory Spinks and the Savvis Center in the history books Saturday night.
As Savvis Center officials said to us, more than once, discussing coverage of the event, “There is the American, and then there is everyone else.”
So, the question is: why didn’t they say that to the Post by making its staff look at our backs, just like the Post did in all the weeks approaching the fight? After all, the Post had at least one man covering Saturday’s bout for every story about the event it had run before fight night itself.
Why were we looking at their necks n and their rewrites of our old leads as they typed them up on their laptops?
SportsEye is no idiot. The Savvis Center is at heart a hockey venue, and the NHL is bread and butter to the Post-Dispatch. To put the one and only daily paper behind a black weekly was evidently a statement the Savvis Center was not willing to make.
It’s a shame. The Post didn’t deserve this free pass, this apparent aknowledgement of its priority. It could have used a reminder that it just got pounded by a rival.
As the only daily paper in town, the Post has accumulated a tremendous amount of institutional arrogance. This is not a slam against individual staffers, many of whom are likeable people and decent journalists. It’s a statement of fact about the culture of the organization.
The Post routinely acts like it’s the only show in town. But, as Spinks-Judah II made very clear n even to the operators of a venue that is very cozy with the Post n not only is the daily paper not the only show in this town, where print journalism is concerned, at times it’s not even the main event.
Cory Spinks may have, regrettably, lost his title defense on Saturday night, but his community paper (which is also, in terms of staff and resources, a scrappy welterweight) kicked the butt of the cross-town heavyweight in coverage of Cory’s historic local title defense.