Dynamo coverage in the Houston Chronicle

Corey Roepken has been laid off by the Chronicle according to his twitter account. This is sad on many levels, first real beat writer we’ve had on the Dynamo for a long time and one who was engaged on twitter.

Hope he lands on his feet.

As far as Dynamo coverage, I suspect they will shift over like the Rice beat guy to do double duty or just hire stringers

 

If Canetti thought the Dynamo/Dash didn’t get enough media coverage already, this is disastrous

 

There’s always ‘The Peel’.

 

AKA “three guys sitting in their grandma’s basement rambling on”

 

Actually, it may drive more traffic to the Dynamo-sponsored propaganda on the team website.

And if all else fails, the team can always fall back on the clutch reporting skills of Cindy Burbano

 

It sucks because he was doing a good job, and raises basic questions about how the paper is doing financially.

 

Poorly. Newspapers are in a death spiral except some larger national brands.

 

The Chron is terrible. Hard to believe it’s the newspaper for such a large city.

 

While there seems to be a movement for a "write-in" campaign to save Corey's job, I suspect the Chronicle's decision is final and this is just an ordinary course reduction in workforce by a shrinking industry.

I am actually a subscriber to the Chronicle but rarely read the hardcopy paper anymore. About a year or so ago the Chronicle started inserting (and charging for) this weekly Texas Sports Nation tabloid size section each Friday that was all about sports (about half Chronicle articles and half national newswire or national paper articles) and they quietly killed it off maybe 3-4 months ago. I never saw an explanation.

Chronicle has also been raising prices on the dwindling base to try and hang on to level revenue. They actually have done a very nice job covering certain large stories (like Harvey and flooding, special education quota, etc.) but too many liberal columnists and just poor story writing, fraught with errors and bad grammar. The laziness shows in that while I live fairly close in-town, the morning sports often times doesn't have a game story as it the game ended "too late" to be included in the edition even if it was like 9:30 or 10:00 PM.

Just laziness and cheapness

 

Chronicle Fake news!!

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/amp/Following-investigation-Houston-Chronicle-13375132.php

 

Just imagine if they'd have assigned him the Dynamo beat - the stories would have been great

 

He could have made up quotes in English for all the players who only speak Spanish

 

Glenn Davis jumped on the Chronicle for not having better Dynamo coverage. Maybe he was inspired by the insane rantings of Web Tilton.

I think the guy in the Reddit thread below who says the Dynamo did it to themselves is partially accurate - Chronicle has been sliding down for a while but Wilmer closing practices for some reason can’t help.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dynamo/comments/bizas8/glenn_davis_criticizes_the_chronicle_local_media/

 

To add to this, out of morbid curiosity I clicked on the Gen Orange stream last night and they had 7 viewers at like 7:10 and 9 viewers at 7:30 and maybe I saw 13 another time. So there’s not a ton of interest in additional coverage

 

There is, just not for what theyve turned Leo's podcast into.

 

Agreed it’s not really coverage, just two guys giving personal thoughts for an hour with Orange-tinted glasses.

On the Glenn Davis Facebook post Darrell Lovell (old writer for mls) chimed in and pointed the finger somewhat at the organization and Wilmer for being too closed and boring and that the lack of English speaking players affects coverage as well.

 

Not the lack of english language but perhaps the availability of those players for the media. Theres not a language any player could speak that cant be translated with an easily accessible translator. But that player needs to be accessible and willing to talk.

 

I will say it till the cows come home, the sport of association football must always be sold to potential new fans bases and cultivated in our turbo insular sports media culture. Ask our local media, people who get paid to cover sports all day, ask 'em about the failure of the Bruce to get the U.S. to qualify for Russia2018 or about Liverpool's comeback return leg win over Barca and they can remotely opine on the topic. Dig deeper and ask about Wilmer and his tactics...crickets. This type of media culture can easily be grown but our FO has lost its ear to the ground.

 

Didn’t know where to put this - zero local media reporting on Elis except for a Berman tweet. What does this say about the club?

The reality is that most local sports guys don’t think there’s a demand for soccer so they don’t cover it. Need fans to show them the demand is there. Tweet at the reporters & ask for more Dynamo & Dash. Like & RT when they do cover.

— Zac Emmons (@Zac_Emmons) September 12, 2020