For newspapers, competition comes in many forms. Historically speaking, competing papers in a single town tried to win customers by offering new and better coverage of what its residents found important. For local newspapers, this arguably remains the competitive structure. In big towns and cities, on the other hand, and increasingly all over the world, this model is changing.
The 24-hour news cycle produces a constant hum of noise, opinion, backlash and critique. National news coverage has become repetitive – the same stories processed and reprocessed through essentially the same lens. Within this cycle, and fueled by global connectivity, it is as paramount as ever for news providers to find a unique, professional voice through which to reach their ever-expanding audiences.
For The New York Times, that means reaching demographics on the local, state, national, and increasingly, global level. This requires tact, skill, self-awareness, and perhaps most importantly, experience. In the sports department, with the promotion of Jay Schreiber to deputy sports editor last week, The Times is leveraging its ability to remain at the forefront of sports coverage across these various competitive levels.
Schreiber started his journalism career in 1973, moving around to different newspapers in New York throughout the seventies and eighties. In 1991, The New York Times gave the New Jersey native a start in The Time’s sports department and Schreiber has remained there ever since.
While The Times is a paper that allows its writers the freedom to move around departments, Schreiber has remained with the same section of the paper for his entire tenure. For him, the sports section offers “that sort of ability to utilize humor.”
“When you’re there that long, you have a lot of institutional knowledge about what works, what doesn’t work,” he said. “I have a visceral feel for how New York sports works, how fans react.”
Having stayed so long in one department and at the same paper, it’s not much of a surprise.
As for why he chose to cover sports instead of some other topic, say international politics, Schreiber responded, “I like to do things that are offbeat, a little irreverent. I think sports allow a little bit more of that. Sports is not life and death, though it is life and death to sports fans.”
In a turbulent print media landscape, The Times competes with many levels of competition, from local to global, and Schreiber’s depth of experience has influenced his own perspective on what works, and what doesn’t, amidst the many competitive layers.
“We’re fighting on more than one battlefront,” he said. “But what we try and do as best we can is, if it’s important – we’ll deal with it. If a story has moved a quarter of an inch, and it’s not very interesting, we try to get out of that noise a bit. Stand to the side, do it your own way.”
Adjustments to the changing competition have been coupled with changes to how journalism is consumed. Print is giving way to digital, and while Schreiber is “…still drawn to opening up the paper every morning and seeing how it looks,” he recognizes certain inherent advantages to Web content.
“Web is fluid. You can fix a mistake. Once it’s in print, you can’t do anything about it,” he said. “There’s a beauty to the Web in that you can absolutely get your best version out there for a lot of people,” he said.
With his experience has come a sense of skepticism surrounding the predicted demise of print media forms.
“It’s hard to predict the future in almost anything,” Schreiber said. “It’s hard to predict which team is gonna finish first, let alone predict the future of the newspaper industry.”
Schreiber’s irreverence continues to thrive, painting in him a perspective tempered by age and experience, and accented with humor. “All you should really think about every day is just do stuff that’s worthy,” he said. “We’ll all figure out where we are when we get there.”
Pitching Tips
Schreiber prefers contact by email. Phone calls are not an effective method of reaching him.
“I get a ton of writers and freelance writers, so put at the top what the subject is,” he said. “…Be direct, and I will read it.”
