I have to admit to personally liking Kevin. He know gives everyone a hard time. That is what "sportswriters" now do. They are no more sportswriters. The sports page has become like live studio wrestling in my opinion. There are a few people I will read. Cecil Hurt comes to mind. As great a writer as Cecil is I'd love to see him write for another publication other than The Tuscaloosa Times from time to time. My love for Alabama and my like for Cecil get convoluted because they are essentially one in the same in my mind. I can't think about Alabama Sports and not think about Cecil. I believe Cecil is a excellent writer. When I hear the name Cecil Hurt I think Alabama. I don't think SEC football, NCAA football, all my thoughts are crimson in nature. None of this is negative toward Cecil. As great a writer as the man is he is just writer for a small town paper where the pre-eminent football program in the NCAA plays. Kevin Scarbinsky is an opinion writer for a small city newspaper which is on life support. It's not just the Birmingham-News, but every other small town newspaper. I'd submit this for your consideration - if it were not for college sports the Birmingham-News would have gone the way of dinosaur before today. The same might be true in Jackson, Knoxville, and a host of other markets. So I always cut guys like Kevin some slack. He isn't writing to win awards. He's writing controversy to keep his newspaper alive. I don't mean to keep his job. I literally mean that without sports, and a writer who will follow the company line he'd be out of a job because the News would would vanish like fog on a warming California morning. Most people will do just about anything to get that paycheck.
Reading the Birmingham-News for the editorials? Maybe the comics and certainly the sports. If I want to read serious journalism I can read the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the LA Times. There are no more Benny Marshall type writers in Alabama sports. Back then it was about the sport. Today it is about survival and improving the brand. The brand isn't excellence in journalism. The brand is cheap controversy, and hope such controversy can pump larger numbers to increase advertising sales. Years ago I sat in a meeting with management at WJOX. Herb Winches was pitching the idea of talk sports radio. One management person kept saying that's why there are newspapers were for. My thought was simply this - newspapers are dead already. They just haven't realized it. People would rather talk about what they know, or believer they know than what anyone writes. When we first started doing basketball and football recruiting shows on the radio sportswriters looked down on us. They knew what we already had learned. It isn't always the writer the ability to reach an audience.
The other day I actually stopped to buy a Birmingham-News. I hadn't bought one in years, instead, relying on leftovers at Hardee's and such places. It cost 75 cents. I was blown away and didn't buy one. I just walked back to my office and picked up my Kindle. That's where you find real newspapers. When Ben Cook and I did the Sports Ticket we had unbelievable numbers. Of course, we didn't know they were that high because we had nothing to compare with except newspapers.I would pound the pavement trying to sell ads. I could show buyers the exact number of readers we had each day, where they were from, what they read exactly, and how long they stayed on line. No takers were found. We were ahead of our time.
I'm going to cut Kevin some slack. He's wrong about a lot of things he writes about. He knows he is wrong. He doesn't care. But what he does understand is that most of his readers still believe that he is a reporter and that he believes what he writes. He counts on anger. We give it to him in huge portions. Every time I see writers like Kevin I wonder if he will be the last man to actually hold down the job he now fills? He just might be.
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