There was a time when big fights were chronicled in the New York Times with banner headlines in large type that stretched across the front page.
Those days are long ago. Newspapers across the country are abandoning the sweet science. Like the sport itself, writing about boxing is fading from view. But the Times is America’s newspaper of record. Being slighted by the fabled “gray lady of journalism” cuts particularly deep.
“The Times is important,” says publicist Fred Sternburg. “It’s still the New York Times. If a million people buy a fight on pay-per-view, you’d think that some of the paper’s readers would want to know what’s going on in boxing. But you don’t get that in the Times anymore. The Wall Street Journal covers boxing in greater depth now than the Times.”
“Do we want to be in the New York Times?” Lee Samuels (director of publicity for Top Rank) asks rhetorically. “Of course, we do. Coverage in the Times is contagious. It really gets the word out there. We make phone calls. We send them advisories on everything we do. They’re always welcome at ringside. But except for the occasional big fight, we don’t get any coverage at all. It hasn’t been for lack of trying.” READ MORE
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Thomas Hauser
(Thomas Hauser can be reached by e-mail at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (“An Unforgiving Sport”) has been published by The University of Arkansas Press.)
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