The Digital Age and It's Devistating Affect on the Racing Media

The way we receive our racing news has drastically changed within the last 2 decades. We as fans used to rely on such publications as National Speed Sport News, National Dirt Digest, Mid American Racing News, RPM Racing News, Hawkeye Racing News, and I can go on. We then had magazines like Dirt Late Model Magazine, Stock Car Racing Magazine, Circle Track Magazine, among others. With the revolution of the internet, we as fans are able to access news and gossip any time, day or night, any day of the year. With websites by series, networks that show the series and sports (SPEED and ESPN come to mind here), as well as web sites where fans can interact. Websites like 4m.net, STLRacing.com, The Drunken Race Forum, and other message boards lets fans communicate with one another. They can post results, discuss previous races and current issues and gossip about the sport. Twitter allows for instant results as they happen as well as updates of the racing action. New websites like DirtOnDirt cover events in detail, and show video as well as articles to show what happened. All of this advancement has come at a price. The print media we have come to love over the years is slowly dying off due to cost and it's inability to keep up with digital media. Within the last 2 weeks, 2 well known racing newspapers have went under. Mid American Racing News fell first, then RPM Racing News. Both of these were well established publications. The biggest one to fall, much to the disappointment of many fans, myself included, was Stock Car Racing Magazine. It printed it's final issue last year. It still exists in website form, but it isn't in circulation any more. Only Circle Track Magazine is still around. What makes print publications so great, in my eyes, is the fact you can go back many years down the road, read about an event, and you can remember it clearly. It is like an instant trip back into time. Digital media just doesn't let you do that as easy. I hate to see print media dying off. It is a sad thing that it and digital media can't co-exist. I think if print publications tailor what they put in their products, they can. My suggestion is to read up and support your favorite magazine or paper as long as you possibly can.