Coverage of pampered sports leaves me cold - more diversity please

If you read the sport sections, you will never read about daring explorers. Instead, you’ll see several pages devoted to corporate-sponsored sports franchises. Newspaper sports sections rarely dwell upon sports entailing stamina or daring. Instead, most newspapers deal with sports with timeouts, particularly US sports, every minute or so. We wouldn’t want our multimillion-dollar sportsmen to breathe heavily, would we?

Sports aren’t only about one person or one team winning, and the other losing. Sports can also be achievements requiring great skill and stamina, such as climbing a great peak without oxygen, or completing a long-distance swim, or a momentous feat by a young person. Such stories are as rare as hen’s teeth in newspaper sports. The main reason – they don’t have corporate backing or aren’t franchised or aren’t in the syndicated daily columns sent to newspapers to be cut and pasted. 

What percentage of readers in Thailand really care what happens in American baseball, which is losing popularity in the US, or in British cricket, which is probably losing interest in the UK? I would venture, if an objective survey was done, that less than 1 per cent of readers really give a hoot. I would also venture that those interested in reading about sports would like to see articles more in tune with the meaning of the word “sport”, and more diversity. 

Now if we could just get some newspaper sections titled “Environment” or “Innovations” or “Alternative Power”. Okay, sorry, that’s projecting things – too far in the future.

Ken Albertsen

Chiang Rai