DodgerSS Posted October 23, 2005 Report Share Posted October 23, 2005 The only decent sportsscribe up there is Bill Lane....fire Pat Kenney and John Moorehouse! BRING BACK THE BLISSTER! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
usckk Posted October 23, 2005 Report Share Posted October 23, 2005 He wasn't fired. He quite Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DodgerSS Posted October 23, 2005 Report Share Posted October 23, 2005 Management made the wrong choice by promoting kenney and demoting bliss.....ron is one of my fave writers. BRING HIM BACK! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WestHightrojanfan2007 Posted October 23, 2005 Report Share Posted October 23, 2005 when i looked in the Citizen Tribune (lakeway area) on Friday..there was no article about morristown east or west...they had stuff about rutledge and JC though....and West is #4 in the state!..East TN papers are horrible....Except for maybe prep extra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Dog Posted October 23, 2005 Report Share Posted October 23, 2005 (edited) I agree w/ fan 360. It's a common thing in West Tennessee w/ the Jackson Sun. But growing up in K-port, I recall the Times was pretty notorius for snubbing the Indians. Don't know if this is the place to put this, but I thought it was news worthy. Steven Moten is having a great season down here in Jackson. He had three interceptions last night against Memphis Raleigh-Egypt. I think he carried half their team on his back the last 10 yards to get us within the 5 yd. line. and setting us up for an easy TD. I know he misses you guys up there and we talk about the great traditions, but selfishly, I am thrilled he's back in Jackson and playing for the Cougars! He and my son are best friends and have played together for years. I'll miss coming up this year to see the Indians play Science Hill ...it's been our open game the past two years, but we'll be battling it out in region play. Good luck next week against the Toppers! I am glad to here Steven is doing well. He is a good kid and has a great family to support him. I truly believe that DB would be turning a few more heads if he was still in Kingsport!! Tell Steven the players really miss him on the field and off!! I allmost forgot to keep this thread on topic. If Steven was in Kingsport the Kingsport Times would not correctly report his efforts. Edited October 23, 2005 by Old Dog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WaCoJaCo Posted October 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2005 when i looked in the Citizen Tribune (lakeway area) on Friday..there was no article about morristown east or west...they had stuff about rutledge and JC though....and West is #4 in the state!..East TN papers are horrible....Except for maybe prep extra Thats sorry coverage, but at least they covered teams in the state of Tennessee. The Kingsport Times News can't even do that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamesbad Posted October 24, 2005 Report Share Posted October 24, 2005 Thats sorry coverage, but at least they covered teams in the state of Tennessee. The Kingsport Times News can't even do that! You guys miss your morning coffee? Seriously, the Kpt. Times News is a regional paper with a great number of it's readers living to the west and north. The state line with Va. is just 5 miles away with Gate City just across the line. That's part of the drawing area to metro Kpt., who the advertisers are trying to reach. The population of the city of Kpt. is but a fraction of the distribution, with only a small % of the readers being D-B graduates/supporters. Harsh reality. While D-B is worthy of good coverage, so are other programs in the distribution area, including some excellent programs just over the state line. Gate City is a very respected and successful program that is frequently finishing at or near the top in Va. with state championships in football, tennis and volleyball in the last few years. Kpt. T.N. readers, many from Va. come into Tn for their daily work and shopping, contributing the the local economy. D-B is but one of many high schools in Sullivan County. While many of us who read CoachT are D-B supporters, let's not "hang 'em" without trying to understand their position with limited resources and pages. By the way, I agree that Tritiessports.com doing a great job! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smalltown Posted October 24, 2005 Report Share Posted October 24, 2005 Could someone tell me exactly what happened with Ron Bliss, and who is the Sports Editor there since he is no longer with the paper/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bud Posted October 24, 2005 Report Share Posted October 24, 2005 Ron Bliss left the Kingsport Times to start this great website: www.tricitiessports.com Say bye bye to reading the Kingsport Times for sports because there is no comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tribal Posted October 24, 2005 Report Share Posted October 24, 2005 You guys miss your morning coffee? Seriously, the Kpt. Times News is a regional paper with a great number of it's readers living to the west and north. The state line with Va. is just 5 miles away with Gate City just across the line. That's part of the drawing area to metro Kpt., who the advertisers are trying to reach. The population of the city of Kpt. is but a fraction of the distribution, with only a small % of the readers being D-B graduates/supporters. Harsh reality. While D-B is worthy of good coverage, so are other programs in the distribution area, including some excellent programs just over the state line. Gate City is a very respected and successful program that is frequently finishing at or near the top in Va. with state championships in football, tennis and volleyball in the last few years. Kpt. T.N. readers, many from Va. come into Tn for their daily work and shopping, contributing the the local economy. D-B is but one of many high schools in Sullivan County. While many of us who read CoachT are D-B supporters, let's not "hang 'em" without trying to understand their position with limited resources and pages. By the way, I agree that Tritiessports.com doing a great job! I don't think people are saying that the T-N shouldn't cover GC. They always have, and for many of the reasons you mentioned and some others, they should. But when the coverage of GC becomes consistently and significantly more than that of D-B (or any of the other area schools for that matter), something strange is going on. My wife is a GC grad and bleeds blue (along with maroon and grey now), and my son (who plays for DB) is good friends with several GC athletes who are often at our house on weekends, and ALL of us have been wondering what's going on with the T-N this year. The paper apparently hasn't bothered to even send a reporter to some of the away games, and only inserted a tiny wire report (I assume) of about 3 or 4 sentences on a couple of them. Now I realize that the TSSAA created a huge mess with reclassification, and I understand the difficulty (I think) of writing a report on a game in Knoxville that ended around 9:45 or 10:00 and getting it back to Kpt before deadline, but this is 2005 not 1975. You can write the report there on a laptop and e-mail it back home if need be. And reclassification occurred several years ago, and I do not recall this being a problem in years past. As far as Kingsporters being a small portion of their readers, the T-N is certainly a regional paper that is read over a fairly large geographic area, and there undoubtedly are more people who subscribe/buy the paper with addresses outside Kpt than in, but I'm also willing to bet that Kingsporters make up a far larger slice of the pie than any other city or town in the area. GC has maybe 15% of Kpt's population, and I'd venture a guess no higher percentage of subscribers per capita than Kingsport. IOW, overall reader data may be a reason not to focus solely on DB (which the paper has never done anyway), but I think you'd have a hard time coming up with a business reason to make GC the lead every week--you could make a much better case for DB. So there are really two issues here: 1) Why does the paper consistently seem to make GC the feature team? and 2) Why has the coverage of DB football fallen off significantly? I don't claim to have the answers, nor do I know that the two issues are even related, but I agree with those who sense a connection between these issues and Bliss's departure. I also know that Bill Lane has had a longtime love affair with GC, for whatever that's worth (and not that there's anything wrong with that). And just to make sure I'm clear, I have no problem with the paper covering GC, or with making GC the "lead" story from time to time, as the T-N has done in the past. In years past, I thought the T-N struck a good balance with consistently good coverage of not only DB, but GC, the Sullivan Co. schools, etc. However, even a casual observer would wonder what's going on this year with the lack of DB coverage, and what's been going on this year with the volume of GC coverage is downright weird. This isn't even one of GC's better teams. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bud Posted October 24, 2005 Report Share Posted October 24, 2005 (edited) Tribal, I bet that Kingsport makes up over 50% of the Kingsport Times circulation. I remember seeing somewhere the amount of papers that they circulate and with Kingsport having 45,000 people I find it hard to believe that the Kingsport Times could be circulating more papers outside the city limits. Either way, I agree that DB coverage has dropped and that Gate City does get more coverage than any other team. I am sure Ron Bliss realizes that this factor is a huge draw to his website for the DB fans that are tired of minimal coverage in the Times News. www.tricitiessports.com usually has about 3 articles a week on DB football. As far as I am concerened the Kinsport Times News can write about anything they want as long as Bliss has his website around. Edited October 24, 2005 by bud Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tribal Posted October 24, 2005 Report Share Posted October 24, 2005 Bud, I'd be interested to see the actual circulation numbers too. As I said, it wouldn't surprise me if they sell more papers outside Kpt than in, but only because you're talking about a huge geographic area with virtually no other "real" newspapers out there. But I don't think the people in Rye Cove, Chuckey, Hampton, etc. care any more about Gate City football than they do DB football. And if a large plurality of your readers (let's say 20% just for the sake of argument) are located in your "banner" city, and if much of your advertising is keyed to that city (haven't seen a lot of ads for the Hob-Nob although lots of people like their burgers), and if that city's only high school is the state's all time winningest program with an extremely devoted fan base, how does it make business sense to give that school short shrift? IMO it doesn't. You do what they've typically done in the past: a moderate focus on DB that is supplemented with consistent coverage and occasional features on other area schools, including GC. The only thing I can figure, and I'm speculating, is that cost-cutting has become so rampant over there that sending reporters to places like Knoxville was cut out of the budget. The dead tree media as a whole is in serious decline, in part because the internet based media is eating its lunch in so many ways. Maybe this is just a microcosm of that phenomenon. Go Bliss! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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