Do you live in an area that has crappy boxing coverage?
Well I do, and I finally decided to do something about it. So, I thought that I would share my story with you, and show that sometimes the little people can get results. So if you get crappy boxing coverage in your area, maybe this will give you the boost to try and change it.
I happen to live in a little dink town in Ohio, and I am located between Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio (closer to Youngstown, home of Kelly Pavlik). Well the major newspaper in my area is Cleveland's "Plain Dealer", it is the largest newspaper in Ohio, and one of the top 20 newspapers in circulation in the country.
Why am I bringing this up? Because their boxing coverage sucks!!!! They have a small boxing section that comes out maybe once a week, and it usually gets lost in the pages of the sports section. The writer who writes the column, often has bad information, such giving the wrong location or date of a fight, or, announcing a fight as an upcoming fight of the week, after the fight had been cancelled for over a month.
When Kelly Pavlik became the World Middleweight Champion, they again, just had a small section lost within the sports section. To me, this should have been on the front page of the sports section. We here in the Cleveland area, are starving for some type of a championship, our Browns, Cavs, and Indians have brought us close, but always come up short, so here we finally have a champion to celebrate, and they blow the coverage completely.
So yesterday, I was reading an article on Maxboxing.com, and Steve Kim called out the sports editor of the Plain Dealer for not sending someone to Las Vegas to cover the fight. So that little blurb inspired me to do something about it, so I decided to email the sports editor, and let him know how I think their boxing coverage sucks.
Just so you believe me, here is a screen shot of the email I sent the editor on Monday.
So today (Tuesday), I went to go have my morning break at work, and I go to get my sports section from the Plain Dealer, and low and behold, what do I see on the front page of the sports section, a huge picture of Pavlik and Taylor, along with a story on Kelly that takes up about 1/2 of the front page!!!! I kind of squealed when I seen it, and got a big smile on my face. Now I'm not positive that this happened because of my email, but I'm pretty sure it is, because I cannot even remember the last time I seen anything that was boxing related put on the front page of the sports section. I even told, and showed my friends that are into boxing, and they couldn't believe it either, because they know how bad their boxing coverage is.
I scanned the front page. Sorry I have a crappy scanner, and couldn't scan the page all in one, so I had to do it in 3 sections, reduce the size for viewing purposes, so sorry it doesn't match up perfectly, but I just wanted to give you a look at the page.
If you want to actually read the article here is the link.
cleveland.com: Everything Cleveland
So there you go, you never know what can happen when you speak up. I just hope they continue to improve on their boxing coverage.
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