Groundbreaking News Thanks to Bob Ryan

So Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan is at The Final Four. He can write about anything he wants before the championship game tonight. And thankfully, Mr. Ryan gives us a column telling us about UNC's Tyler Hansborough. I just want to thank him for writing this informative column about a topic that has never been written about anywhere or anytime before. Tyler Hansborough has been a four-year college basketball player, and a star from day one. But despite all his on-court success, people tend to focus on the negatives, in particular that there are questions about whether or not his game translates to the NBA. But Bob Ryan doesn't care about that, and he is going to use the forum of his column to tell the world that.

It isn't that I disagree with one word Ryan writes. It is just that this article has been written. And written, and talked about on tv, and written some more, and talked about some more. It took me all of one other web site to visit before I saw another writer who wrote essentially the same article, here.

Do you want to make newspapers relevant and reporting relevant again - give me something new. Bob you are there. You are at the games, you have access to these players and these coaches and information almost no one else has. Yet, you give us a column that any person who follows college basketball for one second could have written.

In addition to the repetitive nature of the topic of Ryan's column, he and the editors at the Globe also showed how little attention they paid this particular column with the following sentence:

Again, this is all about his NBA future, and where he'll go in the draft, and the supposition that he would have gone much higher last year, and that he'll never be more than a role-player, etc., rather than focusing on the fact that throwing the ball to Hansbrough on any given possession is still the best hope any team has of putting points on the board, if only because he gets to the foul line more than anybody and he makes 'em when he gets there.

Yes, that is a sentence, 87 words without a period anywhere in sight.

Maybe Ryan can be forgiven if he didn't give this column his all with the news this weekend that The Boston Globe may be coming to an end unless the writers make a series of major concessions. I can understand. Ryan has been synonymous with the Globe for longer than I have been able to read. The thought of no more Boston Globe bothered me all weekend. I can't imagine what that concept does to someone like Ryan. But at the same time, one of the failings of newspapers has been an inability to give readers something different than what can be found on any internet site or any cable news show. Take advantage of your access and give people something special. Make people call or e-mail their friends, saying, "Did you read Ryan today - you have to." Would it be enough to save the paper or newspapers in general? Probably not at this point. But isn't it better to go down swinging, then simply providing more evidence for people who think the demise of newspapers is not really all that big of a deal.