More newspapers dropping NASCAR coverage

The latest steps in the slow death-march of newspaper coverage of NASCAR racing continues: the Tampa, Fla., paper has abruptly dropped its NASCAR beat, and the Greensboro, N.C., Norfolk, Va., and Roanoke, Va., papers are also dropping the NASCAR beat.

That will apparently leave only the Charlotte Observer and USAToday as major American papers still with full-time NASCAR journalists covering the sport, during what can only be described as a full-scale massacre of the corps of veteran NASCAR stock car journalists.

In recent years, in a stunning round of body blows to the sport's news coverage, newspapers in Dallas, Fort Worth, Miami, Philadelphia, Richmond, Raleigh, Nashville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Daytona Beach, St. Petersburg, Fla., Jacksonville, Fla., Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, Birmingham, Ala., and Indianapolis have all either eliminated NASCAR beats entirely or severely cut back coverage to just a few events. Mike Mulhern