500,000 people in the LA area watched the US – Czech Republic World Cup game on Monday. But for today’s follow-up versus Italy — a must-win for the U.S. — the Los Angeles Times gives its readers a wire service preview deep inside the sports section.

Admittedly, 3/4 of Monday’s viewers were tuned in to Spanish-language Channel 34, but still — a sports section that contends with the nation’s best can’t be troubled to invest effort in the most important game the national team has played in four years?

This reflects the paper’s second-rate effort vis-a-vis the world’s biggest sporting event. As far as we can tell, they’ve only sent soccer beat writer Grahame Jones to Germany, with columnist J.A. Adande a late arrival.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post and New York Times have much more serious World Cup efforts, with more staff, more stories, and more internet effort.

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Here’s a story idea the LAT could have run with: 7 of 23 players on the national team have California connections.

• Landon Donovan (hometown: Redlands)(LA Galaxy)
• Carlos Bocanegra (Alta Loma)(UCLA)
• Steve Cherundolo (San Diego)
• Jimmy Conrad (Temple City)(UCLA)
• Chris Albright (LA Galaxy)
• Eddie Lewis (Cerritos)(UCLA)
• John O’Brien (Playa Del Rey)
• (and Frankie Hejduk made the team, but was hurt and replaced by Albright. He’s from Cardiff and went to UCLA)

source: USSoccer.com

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Contrast the black hole of LA Times soccer coverage with the overkill devoted to the French Open — 13 bylined stories over seven days. This for an event that attracted only 1.6m – 1.9m households nationwide. That translates to about 80k – 100k LA area households.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 9:07 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.