The Globe doesn't cover the Revs at all

I'm a faithful reader of the sports section of the Boston Globe, Dead-Trees Edition, and I can tell you that it's been weeks since there's been anything on the Revs, beyond the occasional one line buried in the sports miscellany on Page 2. Now, I don't know, maybe the Globe never covered the Revs with any assiduity, but it's just struck me recently how thin the coverage is. Sure, the Revs are fifth in line behind the Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics, but does that mean they're entitled to absolutely nothing?

There's obviously a chicken-and-egg problem at work here: what comes first, the coverage or the fan base? If I'm Kraft, I resolve the conundrum thusly: "Hey, Boston Globe -- want your privileged access to the Patriots to continue? Then cover my soccer team." That wouldn't be illegal, or immoral, or even particularly fattening.

And Boston is clearly an outlier here in its minimalist coverage. Have a look, for example, at the Kansas City Star's website, and its soccer coverage. Nothing to write home about, but there are at least a couple of bits from the last few days. Now, compare that to Boston.com's soccer news. What do you see there? "Heaps Rebuilding," from December 27; "Decisions to Make," October 3; "Keane Interest," August 23. Heck, they're still on last season!

So who to blame here, the Globe, or Kraft? Both, of course -- but at the same time, it's hard in the end not to be struck by Kraft's blamable indifference.

Well said. The Revs did get fairly decent Globe coverage in the late 90s. I remember c. 1997 some good pieces on Zenga and a few others. Now? Ha good luck. The Globe still employs people like Shaughnessy. They've got to protect their sacred red sox coverage and all that good stuff. No wonder they're going bankrupt.

A sequel to this thread: 98.5 the sports hub doesn't cover the revs at all.

ESPNBoston seems to have dropped coverage as well. There were articles every 2 or 3 days by Brian O'Connell up until mid January. In the past month they've had 1.

Totally agree with you about Kraft forcing more exposure via Patriot's coverage. Then again, the Revs' coverage of their own team is completely lacking as well. Compare the coverage of the scrimmage last week to other MLS teams. Other teams have minute by minute reports during the game and comprehensive highlights. We get 3 updates; a lineup, halftime sentence and final score. Our official twitter account has nothing. You have to look at our staff writer's account to find anything. Our highlights are brief and only show the goals. If our media guy is at the game watching, why not have him provide commentary? There is no interest from this organization and it is the main reason that there's little interest from the area.

Nothing to write about, at least nothing to pull FDA away from writing about the Celtics or whatever he's doing these days.

The Moreno saga? Cardenas and Lozano arriving? Preseason matches? Trialists? Boston.com's last article is dated December 27th. Now I realize there's not nearly as big a market for coverage as compared to the Celtics/Red Sox/Bruins/Pats, but you wouldn't have a day go by without articles on those teams. It's been 6 weeks for the Revs. I don't blame the Globe necessarily. I would hope they have a much better idea of what their readers want than I do. But I do think Kraft holds a lot of leverage with access to the Pats.

Well, as you all know, newspaper coverage tends to drop off once a team starts training camp for the upcoming season.

The Globe covers the Revolution precisely to the same extent as Kraft cares about the Revolution.........

Well, in all honesty, we shouldn't really complain about the lack of coverage by the Globe. It's an irrelevant news medium that will probably be gone in a few years anyway.

If the Revs are truly trying to reach a younger, urban demographic - they probably don't read the Globe so it would be moot.

What evidence is there that the Revs are trying to reach any demographic? Getting coverage in the Globe is the ultimate in low-hanging fruit.

Nothing again today, I'll note.

The lack of coverage of this team by any media outlet shouldn't be a surprise. There is no news, no market and no interest within the community. Those issues lay at the feet of the Kraft's, not media entities.

That is because other MLS cities actually have more than a handful of people who will read stories on their teams. The average soccer mom and her U-10 team don't read the papers for Revs coverage. The 50-100 of us who care enough to read up on the Revs aren't enough to make it worth the ink the Globe would use.

If the Krafts decided to market this team to groups other than just youth teams, there would be enough people interested to make the Revs worth covering, but right now, they are not.

It's not that the Globe is deliberately withholding coverage from the Revs, it's that they can't justify it.

Seconded. There isn't enough interest to expend the resources on it. The Sox and Pats sell papers in what's fast becoming a shrinking business. The Revs don't sell tickets, let alone papers. This isn't chicken/egg, it's cause/effect. Miniscule devoted fanbase, miniscule coverage- that's how it works.

It's not incumbent upon the Boston Globe to serve as a marketing tool for the Revolution.

The Revs don't get much coverage for two reasons: there isn't anything to write about and there isn't a demand for news about the team. The New England Revolution are a minor league irrelevancy in the Boston area and they are treated as such by the regional newspaper.

Making the Revs "look minor league" never stopped Frank D and other writers back in the day from covering the team. Even people like Frank would almost always work in a sentence in pretty much every Revs/MLS/soccer article mentioning that the sport has failed in the past during the NASL era. Not that it wasn't true, but it annoyed me, since when MLS was new, they were doing things very different, and the league as a whole has been very successful. Yes, I said "league," not local team.

So you are arguign that the Moreno story doesn't even rate an article? This is far more interesting than the usual pre-season camp story about [marginal player] hoping to make an impact, or New Coach trying to turn things around stories that basicaly write themselves.

On the Globe website the only stories are the possibility of a game at Fenway, Heaps being named coach, a nice puff piece on Fagundez and the freakin' videio from the freakin' Manchester United friendly last summer!

Yeah, the Revs don't warrant coverage like the other 4 teams, but you can't say that they don't warrant any coverage at all.

I agree with you that the Globe shouldn't waste resources if they don't have anyone reading it. I'm just not sure that's the case. Revs attendance sucked last year, but looking at the newspapers of the 2 cities who finished below the Revs in attendance, there are articles every day.

The Columbus Dispatch seems to have a dedicated writer. There are articles on a new goalkeepers coach, an economic impact study done by the Crew, and a blurb about Duka all in the last week. There's also a blog with nearly daily updates.

The Dallas Morning News, despite having an awful online version, has numerous articles in the past month about signings, competition for positions, the draft/supplemental and team chemistry. There's also a bunch of articles about the USWNT.

But my original point was that Kraft is in a unique position as owner of the Patriots and the Revs. If he wants more coverage of the Revs, he can get it. That doesn't seem to be the case though as evidenced by the amateur coverage his own team's media gives.

It is ironic that the first tweet I read about Moreno's injury came from FDA, but there is no coverage in the Globe. That pretty much says it all.

Soccer is OK for you (FDA) to tweet about, but is not the sort of serious content that our consumers desire. Not the type of content that sells papers even if you "broke" the story on twitter. I am not saying that he did break the story, but just that he was the first person to tweet about it that I saw.

What is so ironic about that? Plenty of things are said on twitter that are not given dedicated space on newspapers or websites.

I don't see it happening either, but if Kraft wants more fans/interest, he should. The Patriots don't need the Boston Globe to win championships and sell out Gillette. The Boston Globe definitely needs the Patriots to sell papers.

You can argue on the margins that the Revs deserve a little more coverage and perhaps you are right. I really think that the current level of coverage can be easily justified, however, considering the state of the Revs, the state of the competition, and the demographic that buys the Boston Globe.

News organizations have their institutional biases for sure, but if people were beating down the doors for Revs coverage, the Globe would recognize that it would be in their financial interest to do so. Ultimately, the demand isn't there.

There's a lot less competition in the Columbus sports scene. It's a totally different scenario when you only have to compete with Ohio State and the Blue Jackets.

That's true. However, Kraft hasn't shown he is interesting in doing even some of the most basic things. He certainly wouldn't sweat the small stuff like this.

The Pats may be part of the reason why the Revs are getting so little coverage at the moment. If you're a beat writer on the Revs, you're pretty much forced to do a lot of "gang that can't shoot straight" coverage. The Moreno situation alone is worth weeks of "What the *@%#!" stories. Perhaps the Globe and Herald would rather allow the team to be an undocumented embarrassment than write a whole bunch of stories that might anger the owner and cost them access to the Patriots