Why print won’t die – Exhibit number 7896

There was something about this piece in the Sunday Times sport section which cheered up an already gorgeous Sunday morning even more. It’s interesting, beautifully written and long enough to feel a little bit indulgent (a prerequisite for any top notch Sunday newspaper article).

But more than all this, it showed again why print journalism will always have a place.

Intelligent, eloquent football writing has flourished over recent years – Henry Winter and Martin Samuel in particular are a joy to read. 

And quite simply this is not something the digital revolution is ever likely to render obsolete. With its emphasis on speed, convenience,  and squashing everything into 140 characters it is hardly a real threat. Some might argue the capacity to pick and choose articles on the web means the reader can go straight to a Winter, or a Samuel, and so our business model remains as worrying as Aston Villa’s loss of form. Maybe in theory, but I stumbled across both the Guardiola article and this piece on Alex Ferguson in the today’s Independent by chance. If the broadsheets continue to invest in quality writers I will still buy newspapers to see who might surprise me.

In the same way that I love Chuck Klosterman’s writing on popular culture, there is something fascinating about really good football writing, the ability of the author to see beauty in the seemingly oafish or mundane being the characteristic I most admire in all my artistic heroes.

And where else but a newspaper would you get it? I like the various football podcasts, particularly the Guardian’s, but they rarely soar any great intellectual heights. Television?  Hardly. It is usually possible to count on one hand the number of incisive, or even interesting points made on Match of the Day. Rarely does the level of punditry, be it Shearer (now mercifully removed from our screens to play out his God complex), Lawrenson, Pleat, even Hansen, rise much above the “Well he’s looked up and had a go and he’ll be delighted to see it fly in” level of banality. Say what you see lads.

My friend Will  posed a fantastic question yesterday when we were watching the FA Cup. What would be my dream time Match of the Day lineup? After some deliberation I went for Eric Cantona and Henry Winter. He went for Russell Brand and Gavin Peacock. Clearly we are both craving something different from our football coverage.

There are great swathes of the football following population crying out to for their minds to be engaged. It is the newspapers who are answering that rallying call.