Wednesday, January 22, 1997
COMMENTARY:
The Bruin sports section serves readers better by covering
collegiate athleticsI am specifically writing today’s column for
all of the people who are not reading my column. That’s right, you
 the very people who are not reading this  are the ones
I’m trying to reach.
I especially want to reach those of you who don’t go near the
sports section. And even more specifically, I want to speak with
those of you who might have tried to read the sports section but
were consistently bored by its content and stopped reading it.
Believe it or not: I am just like you. Yes, we are alike, you
and I.
* * *
When I read a sports section, I really am only interested in a
few sports. College and professional football, college and
professional basketball, and major league baseball. If it’s not one
of those sports, then there’s got to be some pretty impressive
gimmick to get me to read it.
The Daily Bruin sports section does not touch professional
sports. Its college basketball and football coverage is restricted
to the UCLA program. Meanwhile, the Bruin regularly covers more
sports than I even knew existed on a collegiate level, much less
cared about. Water polo? Cross country? Gymnastics?
Whatever. As a freshman in my first quarter at UCLA, before I
joined the Bruin, I can honestly say that I did not come even close
to reading a single sports article about anything but football or
basketball.
And yet here I am, in a position to change things  to
focus in on basketball, baseball and football, and to add coverage
of professional sports  and I do nothing.
Because if we, at the Daily Bruin, made it our aim to cover
professional sports, we could do so with mediocre results at best.
Professional teams play much more than college teams and travel
much more than college teams. We don’t have the resources to follow
them to all of their games. It would be a minor miracle if we could
cover all of the games of just one professional team.
There is essentially no way we could do a good job of covering
all of the things that, as we have established, you and I love
best.
The paper is left with a choice: (A) To have a more popular
scope of coverage but to cover it badly, or (B) to localize, have a
less popular scope of coverage, but to be capable of covering it
well.
The Daily Bruin chose the latter. Because if it had chosen (A),
then its ability to cover what it set out to cover would have
become laughable. It would have looked bad alongside competitors.
When short on resources, papers localize and cover something that
they can cover well.
If we lost more money, we might localize even more and only
cover sporting events within Kerckhoff Hall. On the other hand, if
we got our hands on money from somewhere, like a big donation to
the Daily Bruin sports department that I was unable to embezzle for
myself, we might be able to move away from localization and toward
a scope of coverage that’s harder to handle but more popular among
our audience.
That is why the Daily Bruin has localized to the point where its
coverage doesn’t interest you. Everyone realizes that fewer people
care about our scope of coverage than they do about professional
sports. But we’re capable of doing a good job covering it, and
that’s what’s important.
And, as of right now, there are still people unlike you who do
care about our current scope of coverage. As for you  well,
you’ll have to wait until a million dollars drop into my lap,
marked "for Daily Bruin use only." And I’m afraid that’s just not
going to happen.
Mark Dittmer is the Daily Bruin sports editor. His column
appears on alternate Wednesdays.
Mark Dittmer