Traditional press boxes, and the sportswriters who fill them, are disappearing in Baltimore and other big-league cities across the country. As stadiums are opening or being renovated, the former homes-away-from-home of Grantland Rice, Red Smith and Frank Deford are being downsized and shoved from their treasured perches behind home plate or over the 50-yard line. Even basketball games are now being covered from under the net rather than behind the players’ bench. Ritzy members-only clubs, premium seats and other revenue-generating amenities are going in their place. Baltimore, a trend-setter in stadium design, is no exception: Raven’s beat writers have already been nudged from midfield to a corner under the upper deck. The Orioles are relocating the Camden Yards press box this off season. It’s about money, of course. And the decline in audience and staffing of traditional news media. But the relocations also reflect a fundamental shift in the business model of professional sports. The industry was sustained for decades on the credibility bestowed by news coverage. But teams now cover themselves, enabled by the internet, cable TV and social media. They produce their own game broadcasts, write their own digital newsletters and manage their own social media accounts. The players, too, are getting into the act: they reach their fans with podcasts and websites they control, circumventing independent scrutiny. “In the old days, clubs got free advertising and coverage by the daily newspapers,” says Dennis Coates, an economist at UMBC who studies sports. “With the zombie-status of many local newspapers now, and the decline in viewership for local news, it makes sense for clubs to claim space from those antiquated outlets.” This has made the news media, and hard-to-control storylines, far less important. For the fans, it can mean a less-robust accounting of teams that play in buildings financed by taxpayers. Maryland has pledged $1.8 billion to renovate sports facilities, most of it for the homes of the Ravens and Orioles. “We’ve been looking at maximizing revenues, we’ve been looking at the fan experience opportunities,” says Ryan Sickman, who leads the sports practice at Gensler, a global architectural firm. “The shift has been happening I’d say for at least 10 years now.” The question for teams, he says, is “How do we provide people what they need to do their jobs but also in a way that doesn’t ignore the bountiful revenue opportunities and the fan experience opportunities.” Some teams, he says, have even raised the prospect of relegating reporters to interior rooms where they would follow the action on video feeds. The Ravens didn’t go that far with the multi-year renovation of MT Bank Stadium that Sickman is overseeing. The press box was shifted last season from the 50-yard line to a higher, corner slot. In its place went the “Blackwing,” a luxury club connected to 10 private suites that rent for thousands of dollars. The team, on its website, describes it as “a throwback to a speakeasy bar and lounge.” Ken Rosenthal, a former Baltimore Sun baseball reporter who now works for Fox Sports and the New York Time’s Athletic, says just about every newspaper of any size used to send a reporter to the World Series. Not anymore.  So it makes sense that press boxes would be diminished and the space redeployed to high-paying fans, he says. “I understand why they are doing it,” he says. “I don’t like it, but I understand.” When it opened in 1992, the press box at Oriole Park was the envy of baseball writers: a multi-tiered bank of desks and chairs that spanned several sections behind home plate at the skybox level. Its replacement, now under construction, will be smaller and no longer centered on home plate. The team is already marketing tickets for the members’-only club that will take its place, which it promises will be “a first-of-its-kind experience at Oriole Park.” “We’re providing media with a space that is in close proximity to the existing space and with upgraded amenities,” Jennifer Grondahl, the Oriole’s senior vice president for communications, says. The press box at Orioles Park at Camden Yards has a prime location behind home plate, but not for long. Credit: Jon Morgan The new box will be heated and air conditioned – in contrast to the open-air space it is replacing – with operating windows and adjacent food service. The name will remain the same, dedicated to long-time Baltimore Sun sportswriter Jim Henneman. Grondahl says the team still values the role of the independent press. “The media matters because the media is doing its job to connect the team with the fans,” she says. “While the industry has changed, it’s still very important.” Many basketball writers covering both the NBA and college games have been bounced from coveted courtside seats to a netherworld under the baskets, says Milton Kent, a journalism professor of practice at Morgan State University and former sportswriter and columnist for the Baltimore Sun and AOL Fanhouse. The sightlines are worse, making it harder to track the action, but the teams reap the benefits of selling the old seats to high-rolling fans. “Legacy media just seems to be completely irrelevant,” Kent says. Players, too, are reaching fans directly and burnishing their images with social media. NBA star LeBron James has 48 million followers on X. Some have literally taken to covering themselves on The Players’ Tribune, a digital site founded in 2014 by Yankees legend Derek Jeter. Players post their own first-person essays, videos and podcasts. The late NBA all-star Kobe Bryant was an investor and announced his retirement from basketball on the site. “I don’t think that they feel they need to curry favor with the local media,” Kent says. Orioles fans have access to ample coverage from the team itself through its social media accounts, a cable channel that broadcasts O’s games and the team’s own website where the coverage is unabashedly pro-O’s management. “You will never get accurate criticism,” says Kent, who used to cover sports media for The Sun. The day after baseball’s all-star break this summer, Orioles fans were girding themselves for the loss of key players in another rebuild. The team’s website featured a headline: “With Rocky 1st half Behind Them, O’s Eye 2nd-Half Surge.” The team finished the season last in its division and traded away several popular players. Cultivating the news media was a high priority for early NFL commissioners Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle, says longtime sportswriter John Eisenberg, author of several books including The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire. “It was free advertising,” says Eisenberg, a former columnist for The Sun who is now producing a Substack series on Orioles history called Bird Tapes. Teams have dozens of employees that produce stories, videos and posts for their own outlets and are a growing presence in the press box on gamedays. After he left The Sun, Eisenberg wrote opinion pieces for baltimoreravens.com. “Which I did very carefully,” he says, adding that the team didn’t interfere with his coverage. “I give them a lot of credit for enduring what was on their website.” He says that a shift away from independent coverage has been accompanied by a loss of access to players. Clubhouses that used to be open hours before a game are now closed for all but short windows before games, limiting the ability of reporters to cultivate relationships, he says. “It’s completely controlled and very limited,” he says. “There is still vigor and good reporting going on but there is less of it.”  ...read more read less