The declining influence of sportswriting

The Big Lead makes mention of some seemingly wacky Web stats regarding The Washington Post site:

This, we believe is a first: According to the DC Sports Bog, some wacky things are happening on the Washington Sports front. Sunday, the Redskins unveiled their quarterback of the (immediate) future, Jason Campbell, the Maryland Terps basketball team is 5-0, the Georgetown Hoyas lost to quasi-local Old Dominion, the Orioles could be Hot Stove players, and the Nationals just lost their best player to free agency, but the most clicked-on sports story on the Washington Post’s website is — Ultimate Fighting?

Later in the post, whether intentionally or not, The Big Lead nails the larger trend:

Where are the Redskins fans? Probably the plethora of Redskins fansites (as we’ve mentioned before, the relationship between the Post and the Redskins fans is tenuous, at best).

Terps fans? Probably some Rivals message board.

This is exactly correct — and this hemorrhaging is going to increase for newspapers, not decrease. It's far too easy now for expert fans — many who really have worthwhile analysis to share — to get their work out and build a following online.

Newspapers have a lot of work to do. Boring game recaps and surface-level analysis just aren't cutting it anymore. Papers need to use the assets they have — athlete and sports exec access — and put that to real use to write pieces that any blogger watching a game on TV can't match. It's time to emply some creativity, or papers like the Post can look forward to expanding coverage of Ultimate Fighting while losing audiences for the major sports to "amateurs" on the Internet.