{"id":4520,"date":"2012-03-01T12:11:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T11:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uk.cision.com\/?p=4520"},"modified":"2021-12-03T12:45:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T11:45:23","slug":"journalist-spotlight-barry-newcombe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/journalist-spotlight-barry-newcombe\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Spotlight: Barry Newcombe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barry Newcombe has been chairman of the Sports Journalist\u2019s Association<\/a> (SJA) since 2007. A veteran journalist, Barry has over 50 years of experience, including stints on the Evening Standard <\/a>and Sunday Express<\/a> where he was rugby and tennis correspondent. More recently, he has freelanced for the Sunday Times<\/a>, covering rugby, and has contributed to the Wimbledon website.<\/p>\n

Barry is also chairman of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS) Rugby Commission <\/a>as well as the UK Olympic Press <\/a>Attache for the London 2012 Olympic Games, having performed this role at the Sydney, Athens and Beijing Olympics.<\/p>\n

With over 30,000 website views a day and over 8,000 Twitter<\/a> followers, online communication is vital to the SJA<\/a>. \u201cWe break stories\u00a0about sports journalism and other related aspects and whereas in earlier days you heard what was happening in a pub in Fleet Street now you are a click away from being right up to date. Our website changes constantly\u00a0and reflects the hard work which goes into its operation. I imagine during the London\u00a0Olympics the site may well attract huge and unprecedented\u00a0levels of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in 1948, the SJA<\/a> has developed enormously over the years: \u201cThe pioneers established some firm foundations\u00a0and their ideas have been incorporated and enhanced as we have moved on. Our awards within the industry\u00a0are well respected\u00a0and as new media platforms have developed\u00a0so has the SJA<\/a>. Our annual\u00a0sports awards lunch is one of the highlights of the year. The SJA website is always busy\u00a0and the amount of traffic is considerable\u00a0and increases year on year. We will endeavour to reflect\u00a0that interest as we move on\u00a0without forgetting our heritage and ideals.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the SJA<\/a> has changed so too has the nature of sports journalism and its relationships with PRs: \u201cIn my early days I was reporting a rugby match at which I wrote by hand and dropped the material through a hole in the stand. It would\u00a0then be collected, taken to a phone and the material read out, word by word, to my office. At the end of the game I went under the stand to check\u00a0and there, on the ground, were all my pieces of paper, not one of which had been transmitted. We have moved on. Some will\u00a0recall the advance of the Tandy word\u00a0processor into Fleet Street. We took many of them to the Seoul Olympics in 1984 and I can still hear the roars of excitement when someone made a connection to their offices after minutes or even an\u00a0hour or so of trying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe relationship between PRs and journalists has grown over the years\u00a0and will continue to do so.\u00a0 Much news and feature material is generated\u00a0in this way and there does seem to be an increase in PR inspired\u00a0features across many sports. PR might be able to create feature opportunities\u00a0which would not be available by other avenues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe basics of sports journalism and transmitting information used to change slowly. But not anymore. Who knows what is around\u00a0the corner? We just have to be ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editorial information on SJA along with thousands of other media contacts and websites,\u00a0can be found in our\u00a0CisionPoint<\/a>\u00a0media database<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

For more insight into sports,\u00a0read our previous spotlights<\/a>\u00a0with media including\u00a0sportinglife.com, Footy-Boots.com, The Tennis Space, FitPro, Nicola Joyce, Oliver Brett, Metro, David Gurney, TalkSport, Craig Bloomfield and Runners World.<\/p>\n

Also check out Cision\u2019s weeks worth of sport print and social media rankings<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry Newcombe has been chairman of the Sports Journalist\u2019s Association (SJA) since 2007. A veteran journalist, Barry has over 50 years of experience, including stints on the Evening Standard and Sunday Express where he was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3532,3714,5741],"tags":[3811,3812,3813,3814,3816,77,3319,3809,3810],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4520"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137301,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520\/revisions\/137301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}