No Lyin’: Why It’s Hard To Stay Positive

by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2011 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

I do weekly Fantasy Pick'Em columns here at OPR, as well as the occasional opinion and analysis piece. I also provide the IZOD IndyCar Series coverage. For more on that, head to my site, OpenWheelAmerica.com. My Twitter handle is @christopherlion.

January 29, 2011 12:42 pm UTC 4 Comments

Hey everyone, long time no talk. How’s it going? Hope your offseason has been restful and relaxing, because we’re poised for yet another 10-month grind in this NASCAR season.

Things always kick off with winter testing at Daytona and the annual Media Tour, a good time that’s been brought to the fans, finally, through the advent of social media technologies like Twitter. It’s usually a grand old time with some fun stories to tell, like Joe Gibbs‘ tales of trying to get a hold of Tony Stewart to sign him in the late 1990s when the driver had multiple girlfriends. “Don’t come back to the 20-year reunion,” Stewart quipped.

But like all good parties, there has to be at least one downer moment, and this year’s came from FOX color commentator Larry McReynolds. When speaking to the members of the media, Larry Mac incited a collective groan with his urge for writers to “be more positive” when covering the sport.

Well, since he first uttered those words, I’ve vehemently disagreed with him; it’s just taken me a little bit of time to reflect on exactly why. I would love to be more positive about the sport, but quite frankly, I don’t know that we’re in a position to do so with the way things are right now.

Look, I know I’m repeating myself for the hundredth time or so when I say that the sport isn’t where it was in the mid-to-late 1990s, and I know everyone knows that fact anyway. Everybody knows things are bad. But therein lies the point. We can certainly be optimistic for the future, that NASCAR will turn things around with this latest round of rules changes, but that doesn’t mean we should be Kool-Aid drinkers or paint a nicer picture than we’ve got right now.

Listen – the job of a journalist is to be accurate and tell the truth in a responsible manner to his or her audience. Now, your definition of that may be different than mine; in fact, it probably is. But the way that I interpret that title is, if I see something wrong, not only do I have an obligation to report that to you, but I also have the obligation to make my own suggestions to make things better. No, it’s not the “positivity” that Larry Mac talks about, but at least it’s constructive.

I’ll give you an example. NASCAR has moved the start times of its Chase races back to 2 PM ET to try and boost its slumping TV ratings against NFL games. The prevailing idea seems to be “get the fans to watch the endings of the races.” But the truth of the matter is, that move doesn’t make any sense.

NFL games start at 1 PM ET, and there are two of them – on CBS and FOX – at that point. There’s usually another 4 PM game as well, if not two, before NBC’s Football Night in America. Now, usually those 1 PM games are the Games of the Week, meaning they’re generally good games, and if one’s a dud, fans will normally change to the other, not to the NASCAR race. They’ll also be more likely to stick with football at 4 PM than shift to another sporting event where they’ve missed the majority of it.

On the other hand, if NASCAR shifted the majority of Chase races to 12 PM ET, they’d create an hour of basically unopposed racing that would prove valuable to fans and advertisers alike. If that first hour of racing is a great battle, then the fans will stay tuned in; even if not, there’s an hour of prime advertising space that would make a lot of money. Maybe the races wouldn’t hold the entire audience for the duration of the event, but it’s a start.

Granted, Larry Mac isn’t a journalist, per se. He’s more of a promoter, a talking head on TV whose primary job is to illuminate fans on some of the inner workings of the race team and pit strategy from the point of view of a former crew chief. But that’s just another reason why I disagree with what he’s saying. FOX is not going to pay him to criticize the sport on air, obviously, because that’s not what a promoter does.

On the other hand, digging up dirt and causing problems are the hallmarks of any good journalist. Think of it as the Fourth Estate of government – the people keeping the government in check by exposing issues and enlightening a broader audience about them. That’s what the best racing journalists have been doing as NASCAR’s been slipping; that’s what they will – should – continue to do.

And I’m sorry, Larry Mac, but I think my philosophy has a lot more value to the sport than drinking the Kool Aid does.

Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR & the Media

Tagged with: Larry McReynolds, NASCAR Media Tour

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Comments

4 Responses to “No Lyin’: Why It’s Hard To Stay Positive”

Calnce' on January 29th, 2011 4:01 pm

Great post!!
Ryan Rantz on January 29th, 2011 4:28 pm

Sorry but I don’t think Larry Mac said anything wrong. Most of the stories I see online are based around negativity. Telling people not to be so negative all the time isn’t a bad thing. Some of the NASCAR journalists probably already have a story typed up about Daytona not selling out and TV coverage being down. I think the reason why the journalists are so mad is because Larry Mac spilled the beans on their upcoming stories.
Charlie Turner on January 29th, 2011 4:42 pm

Hey you may be right Ryan. There is a “Ground Hog Day” aspect to the drone of some writers. I just tend to not read those writers much.

Larry Mac is a cheerleader. Thant’s OK, I think.

I can see where Chris is coming from too. I just think that Chris’s kind of journalist is becoming more rare. Agendas abound, and not just in racing writing.
Hey NASCAR: Shaun White Wants to Drive! : NASCAR commentary and pictures,2010 NASCAR schedule,NASCAR video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie on January 29th, 2011 10:48 pm

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