Major League Baseball is officially back under a new collective bargaining agreement for another full 162-game season that began last week. The game itself, while at its core is still “America’s Pastime,” has fundamentally shifted in terms of how it reaches and appeals to consumers – one shift being the placement of box scores.
One of the media distributors that has published the league’s box scores is the newspaper, a place where consumers have learned of the previous day’s news and happenings in various areas of society. While most newspapers have focused their content on the digital domain amid a decline in daily physical circulation, there remains a fraction of people who prefer to get their news by receiving the traditional, physical copy of the paper.
Veteran host Norm Hitzges has openly acknowledged that he falls into that category, which he refers to as the “‘I need a paper in my hands’ group,” as he continues to receive the physical newspaper each morning. Amid the medium’s gradual transition to digital content though, Hitzges expressed to his co-host Donovan Lewis on Norm and D Invasion on The Ticket in Dallas that he is mourning an omission from the newspapers that he just noticed this week.
“I’m mourning the fact that The Dallas Morning News no longer publishes box scores of other [baseball] games,” said Hitzges. “I used to pour over box scores, and unless I’m missing something, I haven’t seen box scores of other games since the season opened.”
Hitzges started as the industry’s first full-time morning drive host in Dallas, and has been on-the-air for over 30 years, including a non-sequential stint as a cable television announcer for MLB’s Texas Rangers. In that time, he has frequently had to look at box scores to follow games around the league, something he did in the newspaper – until 2022.
“That was a childhood ritual of mine,” recollected Lewis, “to grab the newspaper in the summer and pour over all the box scores from the other games…I would run out in the morning, get the paper, and I think at first my dad was a little upset because he wanted to read the paper first, and he’s a sports guy also. But he gave up that fight a long time ago after I would run out.”
As he was assimilating into the broadcasting space, Lewis worked a paper route in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a year-and-a-half. His connection to newspapers, while it has remained strong through the evolution of media, has, like many others, wavered to the degree that he only receives a physical newspaper on Wednesdays and Sundays. Yet his co-host seemed unaware as to how Lewis would receive information about something that happens on a day in which he does not receive the physical newspaper.
“Once you get it a couple days a week, you can always check it out online,” explained Lewis. “I’m just talking about the physical copy of the paper. My parents got it every single day, and I don’t even think they get the paper every day now.”
Hitzges, a member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame, knows that media outlets in today’s society are evolving with changing technologies and consumer trends – both of which are concentrating in the digital space. Convergence has led to the extinction of newspapers and the amalgamation of content, and it is something that is forcing those reluctant – including Hitzges – to adapt.
“I think we’re getting older and getting smaller,” Hitzges said regarding those who continue to read physical copies of newspapers. “Obviously, some cities have totally lost newspapers… That seems to be the trend – that newspapers are slowly, especially in rural areas, slowly but surely disappearing.”
