Catchfence

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about the sports journalism business.

You know all that corporate warfare that you read about — ESPN vs. FOX vs. CBS vs. NBC vs. Sporting News vs. Versus vs. etc? Well, there’s no doubt that we’re all competing for television rights deals, sponsorship dollars and news scoops.

But here’s the part that you may not know. When we’re all sitting around in the media center, press box, hotel bar or airport terminal, we’re all also pretty good friends. It’s true. For the most part, anyway.

That’s why Tuesday was such a collective punch in the gut for all of us in the motorsports media community, no matter who signs our paychecks. The staff of NASCAR Scene, the sport’s weekly newspaper since 1977, was gathered by their bosses, Charlotte-based American City Business Journals, and the vast majority of the staff was laid off, including Steve Waid, who has covered the sport since the Nixon administration. Though ACBJ has not yet made a formal announcement about their plans, it is widely believed that Scene and its sister magazine, NASCAR Illustrated, will merge their now tiny staffs to become a web-only service.

Until Tuesday, the thinning out of the NASCAR media corps had been a slow, seat-by-seat process, the results revealed each quarter as fewer and fewer writers seemed to be showing up for events, particularly on the print side of the business. Just two weeks ago I did a radio show with SpeedTV.com’s Tom Jensen and Landmark Newspapers’ Dustin Long when one of the topics we discussed was that very issue.

But Tuesday wasn’t the loss of one writer or reporter. It was the first real massive blow that took out a large group of NASCAR journalists all at once, something that the teams we cover have been dealing with for nearly two years now. Some will land back on their feet, hopefully in time for Daytona Speedweeks, which are now just one month away. Others will likely be forced to go find work somewhere outside the sport.

It isn’t just those who were laid off who have been wounded. Race fans are hurt by the suddenly smaller group of objective voices covering the sport. Drivers, teams and sponsors are hurt because there are now suddenly fewer venues for them to reach those fans.

- ESPN