Leading off today: My original inclination was to throw a note at the top of this blog entry explaining that it's probably of interest mostly just to readers who work in the media.
Upon further reflection, however, the topic at hand really is relevant to anyone with more than just a casual interest in high school sports.
The short story here: A woman by the name of Leah Lowe wrote a lengthy post on social media with insight into the current challenges of satisfying a public appetite for high school sports news that is healthier than the local media that traditionally had excelled at delivering it.
Lowe's social media bio lists her as a storyteller, photographer, filmmaker and former Rivals.com contributor. The background shows through in her analysis. The 2,400 words created a lot of chatter this week in media circles and on social media.
'Who covers Friday nights now?
The press box is getting quieter.'
As newspapers cut local sports staffs, high school athletics are increasingly being covered by a patchwork of digital outlets, streaming networks, recruiting services and independent creators. What communities gain in volume and immediacy may not fully replace what they are losing in experienced, independent local reporting.
Akeem Glaspie was supposed to be covering Butler basketball this winter. Instead, on Oct. 1, just weeks before the season, the Indianapolis-based reporter announced that his position with USA TODAY Co. had been eliminated.
He was part of a larger round of sports cuts that also included Michael Chavez, whose position with the Clarion Ledger was dedicated to Mississippi high school sports, and senior trending editor Sherlon Christie, a 22-year employee. The full scope of the reductions has not yet been publicly detailed.
Three weeks earlier, McClatchy eliminated more than 90 unionized journalism and media jobs across 17 publications. Twelve of those positions were at the Lexington Herald-Leader, including seven news reporters, three sports journalists, two visual journalists and an editor. Among those laid off was Jared Peck, whose high school sports coverage had been part of Kentucky's media landscape for more than two decades.
By themselves, those cuts look like the kind of media layoffs that have become routine enough to draw less attention than they once did. But taken together with the steady reduction of local sports staffs around the country over the past several years, they point to a larger shift in who covers high school and small-college sports, how that work is funded and where audiences now find it.
What makes the trend more notable is that there is little evidence interest in high school sports itself is declining. More than 8.4 million athletes participated during the 2025-26 school year, the highest total ever recorded by the National Federation of State High School Associations and the fifth consecutive year participation increased.
The reality of the landscape
The above is how Lowe started her essay. I'll offer a summary here of the remainder, but I do recommend reading her words in their entirety.
High school football stadiums and basketball arenas still attract healthy crowds, reflecting the support of families and the enthusiasm of classmates. Rather than waiting these days for a few seconds of video on the sports segment of the 11 o'clock news or reading game details in the morning paper, those spectators are consuming words and images on their smart phones before even arriving home.
In fact, there is more content created around high school sports now than at any time previously. Notably, though, the newspapers that dominated coverage in most communities up until 15 or so years ago now produce only a tiny slice of it.
Newspapers generally haven't made up for small editions published less frequently with their online coverage. A Northwestern University study says traffic to 100 of the country's largest newspaper websites has fallen more than 45 percent over four years. The search engines that some wrong-headed publishers would not allow to crawl, index, and rank content a decade ago are giving way now to AI-generated answers to queries offering enough content that users often don't need to click through to the media website -- which, by the way, probably reside behind a pay wall.
On top of that, schools are almost as likely to upload game results to MaxPreps or niche websites as they are to contact newspapers or TV stations with the same info.
That contributes to the death spiral. As newspapers become less essential, circulation drops, ad revenue disappears, and layoffs ensue. The meat and the muscle were cut away long ago, so the new cuts are to the bone; local high school sports coverage is something that national media, including specialty websites, can't match. But newspapers can't own that franchise anymore if they're letting go of their reporters; the remaining staff is left with less time for features and the relationship-building that generates story tips.
Some media outlets are digging in for a fight
Not all of Lowe's analysis is a downer.
She points to Strib Varsity, an ambitious statewide effort by the Minnesota Star Tribune (which has been ahead of the curve in general from the moment the internet reached critical mass). MassLive.com credited high school sports coverage for about one-third of new subscriptions last year. NJ.com has made at least two new hires tasked to high school sports this fall.
Products that used to carry the label of "new media" are now mainstream and filling voids. On the west side of the state alone, WNYAthletics.com has started publishing a weekly glossy magazine and the web-only PickinSplinters.com has picked up some of the slack in the geographic monstrosity of Section 5. On the east side of Section 4, Nate Lull carved out a niche with a mix of radio, podcasts, and web updates.
Nationally, Northwestern University says 300 local news startups (80 percent of them digital only) have popped up in the past five years.
The problem is that many are one- or two-person operations without strong financial backing and are destined to fail. Subscription models require a constant feeding of the beast in the form of new articles, photos, and video, and free sites typically depend on sponsors who are literally pulling their payments out of the day's receipts in the cash register.
A final word from Leah Lowe
The Friday night game story is not necessarily obsolete, but it no longer has to stand alone. It can live alongside the short-form video, the livestream, the photo gallery, the podcast interview, the recruiting notebook and the deeper feature that gives people a reason to care about someone beyond a final score.
High school sports is not struggling to produce stories. There are more athletes participating than ever, and more ways than ever to follow them.
The unresolved part is who will still be paid to spend enough time around those teams and communities to recognize which stories matter, understand the context behind them and tell them independently.
As newsroom resources decline, the challenge is less about replacing local sportswriters than finding sustainable ways to preserve the kind of reporting they have long provided.
