You won’t have read too many positive things in this column about the current NRL leadership, but #talkthegameup hashtag isn’t a bad thing.
This opinion would seem to put me at odds with many of my colleagues, who regard it as a declaration of war on the mainstream media.
In fact, it was probably prompted by a tweet by a person in the mainstream media, but I completely accept it’s not aimed at them.
It’s aimed at players, officials and fans.
In Australia, rugby league is so omnipresent that people almost forget there are other things, that it is a sport that sits alongside and competes with others.
So we tend to escalate our internal squabbles very quickly – because it’s easy to forget there’s an outside world.
In that outside world, this looks poor. It hurts the game because rugby league’s culture seems to be nothing but poisonous and self-destructive.
A circuit breaker that reminds everyone there are people out there who watch four games a year and can’t fathom why we blame referees for everything is actually not a bad idea. If it makes people think about the need to promote the thing that we actually take for granted, then that is a positive.
I note the link being made between the sentiment and the poor access to players for the mainstream media. But if we accept Todd Greenberg’s claim that the hashtag was not aimed at the media, there’s no link at all.
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Yes, the NRL now has a massive in-house media structure. Although claiming editorial independence, NRL.com “works with” some clubs on content. Other clubs, no doubt, don’t like that independence and don’t give NRL.com much favouritism at all.
Yes, this will in many cases leave the mainstream media to cover negative stories with their resources, which are now smaller than NRL.com.
The one thing I’ve learnt in the last five years running websites is that it’s hard to make content pay for content. The sums just don’t add up if all you’ve got to sell is stories and pictures.
Why do NRL.com and Fox Sports seem to have more stories and more reporters than the Telegraph, Courier Mail and Sydney Morning Herald?
Because their main businesses are something other than stories on a webpage or newsprint. They have a football competition and a TV station.
They can then reinvest in content to promote that business rather than relying on it for their bread and butter. I would like the new merch company I’ve set up with a fellow called Phill Browne to eventually carry content about international rugby league, which is our niche.
But would we carry stories about other rugby league merchandisers? Almost certainly not.
When you fund content with another form of commerce, you have built-in blindspots. You don’t cover, or report criticism of, your core business. Goose, golden egg, all that.
That is the problem facing old media brands right now. As I said in a previous column, journalism is much harder to get out of than get into from an ideological perspective. It’s like being a policeman – you pretty much can’t do anything else at the same time lest you be compromised.
Perhaps, like the Toronto Wolfpack parkas we were selling the other day, this predicament will have a silver lining.
In order to balance out all the negative stories they must write because they are the only truly objective platforms in the space, the mainstream media will learn to rein in the extreme peaks and troughs of their tone in covering rugby league.
If you want people to believe that you’re the only trustworthy, independent outlet covering the sport, then #crisismerchants aren’t really a good idea.
Survival for, particularly, the News Limited papers does not lie in getting attention in any manner possible and in general malevolence, but in simply telling people things they don’t know.
There’s no point being the only sheriff left in town if no-one respects your badge.
It might be hard to talk the game up when you can’t speak to anyone – but it’s equally hard to be the paragon of independent news-gathering when you proclaim armageddon every second day.
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All the team list information for Round 8.
