Should sports teams and local media share content?

Just read an article about local newspapers sharing content as a means of saving money. Seems like sports teams and local media might consider following this example….

New York Five major newspapers in the northeast today announced an agreement to share editorial content. The papers will be able to access each other’s articles, photos and graphics through a central hub that execs say will be fully functioning by May.

The move is part of a trend among smaller papers in South Florida and Maine, as well as larger collaborative efforts on sports (Washington Post and Baltimore Sun) and international news (CS Monitor and The McClatchy Company) that has helped publishers fill their newspapers as staffs have gone through waves of deep cuts the past year. (More from Paid Content)

I am interested in the development for a couple of reasons. First of all, in my work for sports teams I have recently been approaching various media entities to discuss possible partnerships. Both the media and the teams are operating with fewer hands on deck, and both need to populate their pages and airwaves with fresh content in order to keep and grow their audiences. So it seems to me that partnerships could be in order; but getting over the old “every man for himself” business model and embracing the “rising tide lifts all ships” model isn’t as easy as it sounds. Seems like the more successful a company has been in the past, the less likely they are to be willing to jump into partnershps…which is why I wonder if the smaller players have an advantage. They have less to lose. They are perhaps more humble. And they have smaller overheads and lower revenue needs…for all these reasons they could outlive the big guys I’m thinking.

Should sports teams partner with local media? Join a discussion on Sports Marketing 2.0

The other reason I’m interested in this piece (from Paid Content) is that it introduced me to a widget, Sphere, which I hadn’t seen before today. Among other things, the widget can let the reader see links to any blog that has linked to an article. Kinda cool. And in fact this is a great example of the way bloggers and online media are already sharing very fluidly with one another, without need for any central repository of content as the newspaper consortium is creating. This open source model, I suppose, could ultimately doom even the smaller market papers, or force them to open up even further to share content with everyone, not just a chosen few professional media outlets.

Just checked to see if the widget picked up my link, and sure enough.

Notice the “Sports Marketing 2.0″ link…pretty cool