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Another nail in the coffin for written sports journalism?

THE Boxing Writers’ Club, which was founded in 1951, will cease to exist following its next AGM which takes place in April.

Its closure represents a somewhat depressing sign of the times. “The club’s roll, which at one time numbered nearly 100 members drawn from the United Kingdom and the United States, had dwindled to just 25 as boxing, like so many other sports apart from football, was pushed to the fringes of coverage by newspapers pummeled by financial woes,” read a section of the latest bulletin from the Boxing Writers’ Club. It can be read in full on the following page.

The Club’s annual award ceremony, which crowns the Young British Boxer of the Year, remains a hugely popular fixture in the boxing calendar and will be sorely missed. The Club’s desire to stay loyal to their roots, and to largely abstain from the world of social media and the like, may have contributed to its downfall. That changing face of the media, and how it is consumed, has affected plenty of us in recent years.

Though I am now 46 years old, I suspect I was among one of the last generations in which wanting to be a sports writer was a common ambition. Today, though new writing talent thankfully still emerges, it’s nothing like it was even just 10 years ago.

Often, when talking to greats like Colin Hart and Jeff Powell (belated congrats on the MBE by the way, Jeff), I yearn to have experienced the halcyon days of sports journalism.

Whether we should blame newspaper editors for not focusing on boxing, and therefore making any boxing specialists largely redundant, is a matter of opinion. It seems a far bigger issue than that.

Without question, it speaks of the slow death of quality written journalism. Though I believe there will always be a place for such journalism in society, the fact remains that younger generations now get their information, whether true or not, from platforms they deem easier to digest. The real consequences of that are, mercifully, still a long way from fruition.

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