Racing Media Coverage: Where To From Here?
Friday, March 5, 2004
11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Mr. Stan Bergstein: Perhaps the most damaging of all the media non-coverage is the New York Times. Space keeps shrinking and racing becomes less and less a presence in the press. The question for this panel is where do we go from here?

I am going to introduce the panel. Dave Bianconi is publicity director at Northfield Park in Northfield, Ohio, where the Cleveland Plain-Dealer is the journalistic voice of the area. Dave also does broadcasting for Northfield and the Little Brown Jug and he is recognized as one of the bright young stars of this sport.

Michele Blanco is the publicity director at Calder Race Course and president of the Turf Publicists Association, which is a sign of a high regard and respect for her work and for her by her colleagues and her peers in publicity. The Miami Herald and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel are major papers on her beat.

Bill Nader has moved to a loftier position than publicity in the New York Racing Association, where he is the senior vice president and the voice of that racing giant. He is a veteran in the publicity and the media wars and it was his job to steer NYRA through the dangerous shoals of damaging coverage during the past year.

Billy Reed is one of the most respected racing writers in the country. He is a two-time Eclipse award winner, and a former sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. The quality of his brilliant writing has been evidenced over the years by the fact that he has been recognized with many assignments by Sports Illustrated. He is a long-time friend of and one of the great racing writers in this country.

So we start off asking the question of where we go from here and I am going to ask Dave Bianconi, who is one of the fortunate ones to be in area where there is a receptive and a friendly, but critical reviewer of racing to deal with in Bob Roberts of the Plain-Dealer. How do you view your job where you are fortunate enough to have someone who writes racing regularly but does not necessarily give you a pass on everything you do.

Mr. Dave Bianconi: It is a double-edged sword having to deal with this guy, but in all actuality we are very glad to have him. In our market, Akron and Cleveland, you have got quite a variation.

You have the Plain-Dealer that still has our charts and entries every day. Bob has at least one article a week, if not two, often front page for the Little Brown Jug, the Ohio Derby, or even bigger races at Northfield.

Then you have the Akron Beacon Journal, which has absolutely nothing. They dropped all entries and results. They are lucky to have an Associated Press story on the Kentucky Derby, so I certainly can take Bob giving us a little jab here and there, over total dismissal.

The newspaper part of it is the easiest part of it to deal with because Bob is always looking for information for a story. We try to give him the best information possible, human-interest stories, etc. besides the meat and potatoes of the racing and promotions.

The much more difficult side of things is television. It is a totally different animal all together. We are lucky to get on TV maybe two or three times per year. You have to really know when to go in with your story. You don’t want to call them too often and be a pain in the neck to the guys, but on the other hand, you don’t want to throw away a chance to get on with a good story. You have to know when to hold them and when to fold them.

We do have a friend in the radio market. The leading talk show guy in Cleveland is a huge horse racing fan and we are a big sponsor of his show, which definitely helps. They always try to tell you there is no crossover between whether you advertise and whether you get covered, and we all know that is an absolute load of what they are shoveling in the backstretch. We are lucky to have a voice in radio with this guy who loves to talk about horse racing. So, in our market we are holding our own compared to a lot of others in the country.

Mr. Bergstein: Bob, you are working on a newspaper that does give racing regular coverage and is one of the few that does. That obviously reflects an interest in or recognition of the sport by your editors. You might give us a little bit on the bright side of the story. Few writers get to cover racing as thoroughly as you do. How about the racing coverage at the Plain-Dealer, and how did that happy fact come about?

Mr. Bob Roberts: It is somewhat happy. At one point I would write a Wednesday opinion piece. When I started covering both sports about ten years ago, I would write a notes column on thoroughbreds on Thursday and a notes column on harness racing on Friday, and then from February until June I would write a Triple Crown countdown on Saturday, plus they gave me an imaginary thousand dollar bank wad to blow any day of the week I wanted to on any race in the country. But we have now cut it down to the Wednesday opinion piece and we have cut it back from two notes columns to one and they have thrown out the Triple Crown countdown, otherwise I would be in Florida covering the Florida Derby, which we don’t even cover anymore. I am hanging on there. I know I am a dinosaur. I think it is becoming that they are looking only for the big story, the grand-slam story.

We had a managing editor come up to Northfield a couple of weeks ago because my dentist friend is there every Wednesday and the managing editor moved into his neighborhood, and he heard about Bob Glazer, the owner of Peter Pan Stable in Cleveland. They started talking stories about Bob wearing a beanie in the old days and betting with both hands. I got an email the next day that he wanted a page A1 profile on Bob Glazer.

I tracked him down in Lexington, Kentucky. I drove down there, and he gave me about three hours of dinner time, and we made the front page of the paper, not the sport page, the front page. So I think maybe racetracks should think more about looking for the big story. Sell it to anybody, because if turf writers are dinosaurs, sell it to a writer or a columnist because it is tough getting in the daily grind. I can see why they are pulling back more and more from the daily grind.

We do run full entries and results charts for Thistledown and Northfield, and they have both expanded to 14-race cards, so that is 28 sets of entries and charts every day. That is a big hole in the newspaper. I am afraid to tell them, “Hey, can we cut back on the agate and get more nine point?” because I know what would to happen. There would be two high school girls’ basketball stories where the charts were.

Mr. Bergstein:  Billy, the great strength of your writing over the years has always been the feature side. Is there really any hope for racing, in your opinion as a former sports editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal and as a long-time observer of the scene, for re-capturing racing coverage other than doing feature stories?

Mr. Billy Reed: Well, Stan, I think there is. It is interesting really the way things have changed. In 1968, when I went to work for Sports Illustrated, we had a managing editor who loved horse racing. In those days, Whitney Tower was the main racing writer, I kind of was his back up, and I also became the harness racing writer. In those days, Sports Illustrated would do anywhere from 15 to 30 stories about thoroughbred racing, and 12 to 15 about harness racing. Now, Sports Illustrated does maybe 4-5 stories about thoroughbred racing and none about harness racing. I think I did the last piece for Sports Illustrated about a guy that was in the Kentucky Futurity over ten years ago.

Mr. Bergstein: It is interesting because the editor now at Sports Illustrated worked his first job with me and then worked for the USTA. When he became editor of Sports Illustrated, I thought it would be a great break, but so far it has not materialized. I have not mentioned anything to him, but the point is that apparently it is more than just an editor’s decision. There seems to be a policy decision with Sports Illustrated.

Mr. Reed: Well, when I took my early buyout from them in 1998, one thing that the executive editor said to me was, “Unfortunately for you, you have expertise in a sport that we no longer care about.” While I appreciated his candor, I thought that was very telling about how racing has fallen in favor among national publications.

When I started there in 1968, harness racing had two guys, Stan Bergstein and Joey Goldstein, who were the absolute best in the business. Nobody in thoroughbred racing could even come close to them. What they did was they got to know you and constantly bombarded you with stories and ideas. I think, ‘Who is doing that today?’ In my opinion, this sport has developed an inferiority complex. People have just given up. You accept what others say about you and the time has come to fight back.

If there is one lesson to take from the success of the book and the movie about Seabiscuit, it is that people still love horses, they love the horse racing stories, but it is up to the industry to get the stories out. You can’t just depend on the trade publications. The key is getting them out and into the mainstream media.

Those of you who run racetracks, I would like for you to go back and ask your PR guy, “Who is your contact with Sports Illustrated, with People Magazine, with ESPN?” If they can’t tell you, they are not doing their job, because every track has good stories to tell. You have got to get to know the players in the mainstream media and you have got to make them aware of these stories, and you have to run the risk of getting rejected. Maybe every now and then you are going to hit with one.

In thoroughbred racing, the great Joe Hirsch is a wonderful human being, kind, generous, and as close to a saint as any guy I have ever known, but I contend that Joe, journalistically, was bad for racing. I say this because he never wrote a bad thing about anybody. People in thoroughbred racing just got accustomed to that. They thought that was the way they were supposed to be treated. When people from the mainstream media would cover a horse race and start asking questions that somebody in the industry like Joe would not ask, all of a sudden they thought we were trying to hurt the sport by asking those questions. That is an attitude that needs to be changed.

Mr. Bergstein: That is an interesting observation, because I personally have been criticized for writing about some of the weaknesses of our sport, including the integrity issue. My point is that if you lose your credibility as a reporter in ducking or avoiding those issues, you are going to lose your credibility in all aspects or facets of the sport. If you can’t get your laundry clean in other means, the only way to get it clean is to wash it publicly.

Michele, you work in a market that is an interesting mix because you have your regular residents of south Florida and your regular patrons of Calder, but you also get a great influx of tourists from various parts of the country who are interested in racing there. How do you approach that problem from your point of view as Calder publicity?

Ms. Michele Blanco: I would not call it a problem. Specifically at Calder, though, we do not have that situation so much during the summer, unfortunately I would welcome the winter dates for Calder some year, but generally the tourist season is during the winter when Gulfstream is open. You can see it in the attendance figures. At Gulfstream, the tourism really adds a lot to the daily attendance. But at Calder, we are catering to our locals during the summer.

Mr. Bergstein: Bill, nobody has had a tougher year than NYRA and you in your role as senior vice president faced the issues directly and head on. In view of what Billy had just said concerning positive coverage as opposed to critical coverage, what is your experience in recent years?

Mr. Bill Nader: Well, having the three tracks in New York, Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga, put aside the stories of the last year. We take our bad medicine pretty well because we get a lot of good medicine. We get a lot of great coverage around the Belmont Stakes. We get a lot of incredible coverage throughout the Saratoga meet, where it really is the center of the universe. And while we might disappear from the scene in the months of December through March, we pick up steam during the other months.

I think the sensitivity issue that maybe Bob and Billy would talk about, we are not as sensitive in New York because I think in the media capital of the world, we understand that all sports take their hits. You know, whether you are the New York Yankees or you are NYRA, you are going to take some hits, and the main thing is to get covered. At Saratoga, we get phenomenal coverage even from the downstate media and upstate between radio, television, and print.

Billy’s point, I want to come back to that because I have been on the other side as director of publicity, and to reach out and try to recruit coverage, you do get beaten down because you can go 0 for 20 before you finally make a score.

The one thing I would emphasize is that when you do reach out, you have to have a story. You can’t just be reaching all the time because then you lose all credibility, and when you make that contact they are just going to disregard you. As long as you have a legitimate idea for a story and you treat the reporter with some kind of respect, that is how you really cultivate a relationship.

Mr. Reed: I agree with Bill, but it is better to have a bad idea than to have no idea at all. I can think of lots of examples, but one of them was at last years Kentucky Derby. The winner of course was Funny Cide. The owners were a great human-interest story. Did any of you see them on the Monday morning talk shows with Katie Couric? Why? I guarantee you nobody from this industry thought to call and get those people on one of those talk shows, even though you are paying PR types hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was a great story, and what are people in racing thinking?

Mr. Bergstein: Your career spanned not only the era of racing coverage, but also spans much of television. You mentioned 1968 in the early years, and we frequently hear of the missed opportunities of racing not picking up on television in its early years costing us today. This is obviously true. Is it also the fact that the sports editors of today grew up on television, not seeing racing on television, so they don’t care about it?

Mr. Reed: I think that is true, Stan. I also think that it used to be that the big races, the Derby, the Hambletonian, the Little Brown Jug, you could get some of the big name columnists to write columns sometimes about those events, but as those guys have retired or passed on, this whole new generation of the major opinion shapers in this country have never seen a Kentucky Derby. Now why? Why can’t racing, whether it is the NTRA, Churchill Downs, I don’t care who, why can’t you establish some type of  what I would call a scholarship program, take guys like that, really important opinion shapers in this country, invite them to come in, pay their way, take them around the backstretch, let them experience your scene and what you have to offer. Maybe they will come back, maybe not, but maybe they will. That is the kind of thing this sport has really got to start doing.

Ms. Blanco: Churchill Downs does have a wonderful program that is in its thirteenth year now. It is the collegiate sports journalism seminar, where they invite prominent sports writers and journalists and television people from around the country to participate. They have 40 college students during Derby week come and participate in the program. This is just one example of what the industry is trying to do. It serves two purposes. Not only does it get the prominent sports journalists out, but it is cultivating the college students to kind of shadow these people during one of the greatest weeks in horse racing.

Mr. Bergstein: In that connection in harness racing, they took a group of college student writers to the Hambletonian for the whole week last summer and exposed them not only to the sport, but the people in the sport and the backstretch features. I think it was a highly successful program.

Mr. Reed: The other side of that, I mean this is good, but I was talking about getting the major opinion makers. Now here is the other side of that. It is my understanding that a few years ago in Louisville, there was a FFA national convention. A lot of these kids love animals and agriculture. They wanted to come out to Churchill Downs, take a look at it, get the tour, the whole deal. Churchill Downs was not running then. The place was empty. This bunch of kids went out there, had to pay to park, and had to pay five dollars each admission. Now give me a break. That is what is wrong with thoroughbred racing. Churchill Downs should have sent buses to pick these kids up and had gift bags for them. Now here is an opportunity to really get young people involved and interested in horse racing.

Mr. Bergstein: The answer frequently heard when complaints are made to sports editors about lack of coverage is basically two-fold. First, the space is tight and other sports are more important. Also, the charge for both thoroughbred and harness racing is that many sports editors do not even regard racing as a sport and think that readers don’t care about racing. They get infrequent, if any, complaints about lack of coverage. Any or all of you, I would like to hear your comments on that.

Ten or fifteen years ago when the Los Angeles Times cut out either some entries or results, Santa Anita ran a full program page asking their patrons to write to the Los Angeles Times about that. I believe they had 16,000 responses if I am not mistaken.

Are we losing the opportunity to encourage the wrath of the fans who do love racing and that they are the silent majority or silent minority who don’t let the media know about it?

Mr. Roberts: I think they are reluctant. A lot of guys are reluctant to call and complain about stuff like that. There is some of it. Every email that I get complaining or applauding the coverage, I just pass it along to the sports editor and the managing editor. My sports editor just tolerates the sport and thinks it is a sport on the decline.

You know, I live in an area where there are several 30,000 or 40,000 circulation papers. I think that may be an area where racetracks can jump and get involved, because most of those papers focus on high school sports. Those guys work real hard Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. You pick up those papers on Monday and Tuesday, and they are full of wire copy. I think if PR departments at racetracks could hire a writer or have somebody who does write come up with feature stories of people who live in that area, I think they can get those in the paper.

Mr. Bergstein: That is interesting, Bob, because most major tracks write local releases about their area and almost neglect the people who are racing at their racetracks all come from somewhere else. If someone is racing at the Meadowlands and owns a horse, it’s easy when you have a horse like No Pan Intended, the harness horse of the year, it is easy to do a Bob Glazer story, but there are countless other people who win nine other races a night who may come from Ohio, West Virginia, or wherever. Those stories could be local features. It seems to me it would be worth the while in publicity departments at tracks to have somebody who did nothing but write those local stories, local in the sense of being local to wherever those people came from. Is there anything like that done at NYRA, Bill?

Mr. Nader: Well, you are talking regional-targeted coverage, and we do a little bit of that, Stan, probably more so in Saratoga because there is a bigger audience for that upstate. Downstate we are lucky because it is very competitive. There is the Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, and the New York Times, but you go into an OTB branch and there may be 200 people and there may be only two or three Daily Racing Forms. People are handicapping using their daily newspaper, particularly the Daily News or the Post, so that competitive nature gets us a lot of space in terms of entries and results. As far as editorial coverage, we have seen a bit of a decline in that over the last several years. Paul Moran, who is a very gifted writer for Newsday,gets less and less space all the time. So if a story of local interest can help get us in, that is a card we have to play.

Mr. Bergstein: The New York Times obviously is a New York newspaper, but it is also a national newspaper. One of the things that I think people overlook is the impact of the Times on sports editors elsewhere in the United States. If a story appears in the New York Times, it is considered legitimate, authoritative, whether it is or isn’t, and it also lends credence to its use in the Milwaukee Journal or in the Tucson Citizen or any other sports editor who might see it in the Times.

It even is reflected in television. A story in the Times will quickly appear on television, network television in New York, a few days later. The New York Times has been an almost impossible nut to crack for harness racing and it has not done much better with thoroughbred racing, except for Bill Findley and others who do features on major races and major figures in the sport. Am I correct in believing that the Times is a pilot for the rest of the industry?

Mr. Reed:  Absolutely, Stan. Sports editors generally judge how much space they are going to give a sport according to attendance and television ratings. Those seem to be two of the barometers. Why has racing accepted the fact that those things have declined in racing when, in fact, they have not? I think I could make the case that if you counted live attendance and attendance at simulcasting parlors, that on any given day, there are more people watching racing than any other sport in this country. Has anybody gone to these people and made that argument?

What about TV ratings? When it comes to measuring the popularity of racing, the way that TV ratings are measured has gotten obsolete in some ways as applied to thoroughbred racing. The Kentucky Derby for example—how many people have Derby parties where you have 200 people gathered around watching one TV. Why aren’t the simulcasting parlors in the US and around the world counted? That is TV viewing, isn’t it? And yet those rating systems don’t take that into account. I think these are things that the industry can take and instead of just rolling over, it needs to fight back and start making some of these points to people.

Ms. Blanco: In defense of organizations like the NTRA, I think a lot of efforts are being made in the areas that you are suggesting. I don’t represent the NTRA, but I am well aware and I am sure that Bill is aware of a lot of the efforts that are being made and maybe not even recognized because they may be happening behind the scenes, so to speak. As far as television coverage, at least for thoroughbred racing, over the years there has been a major increase in the major events of racing series on ESPN. While as a publicist, I don’t feel like we are there and it is a problem, I do see some movement in a positive direction.

Mr. Bergstein: Penny Chanery was on last year’s media panel, and made the comment about the oversight of appealing to women as far as racing is concerned. Gulfstream Park has a program in which they do that. Penny’s remarks were echoed by Tom Aronson’s wife, who has written books on racing for women from a woman’s point of view. I don’t know too many tracks that have picked up on that as far as the potential. What do you do in Ohio, Dave? Do you have much of that or is there any effort made toward it?

Mr. Bianconi: No, we have done a pretty poor job as far as marketing to women is concerned. We have failed miserably in that category, I would have to say.

Mr. Roberts: I think there were a couple of conferences at Thistledown. They had like a women’s round table discussion.

My wife does not care much about horse racing. We have a daughter who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. We went up there two years ago, and I did not want to just go shopping, so I said we could drive down to Arlington for a day. They really enjoyed an afternoon of racing at Arlington. We went in the clubhouse, and it is a beautiful clubhouse, they enjoyed a nice lunch, they thought the flowers were gorgeous and the paddock was gorgeous. From that standpoint, I think you have to appeal to them that way. When they go to the racetrack they don’t want to stand against the wall and have a hot dog and a beer. They want to see the glory and the beauty of it. I think racetracks would really have to spruce up to get women interested in racing.

Mr. Reed: I agree that women are a great untapped resource, but the best way to change this is to get women into high positions of authority at tracks and within this industry. You look at the board of directors of almost any track you can name, and you show me how many women and minorities you see there. We need more women track presidents, general managers, and we need more women in important, decision-making positions. Right now, everything, the tracks, magazines, and everything in this business is run by white guys. There is a black owner now in the NBA. Other sports are ahead, as usual of racing.

A great story, a couple of years ago, was the woman who trained Azeri, the first female ever to train a thoroughbred racing Horse of the Year. She should have been on the cover of every trade publication. There should have been a story about her in Sports Illustrated, on the cover of People magazine. Did any of you see anything? Did the industry try?

Ms. Blanco: That is a point. What efforts were made? A lot of times we have wondered how many pitches you need to make to an editor to get one story placed. It is almost like training racehorses. How many horses do you have to have in the barn before you get in the winners circle? We don’t know what efforts were made. We don’t know how many times a publicist may have been shot down in that area.

Mr. Reed: I think we can look at the results and reach the conclusion that no efforts were made.

Mr. Nader: The demographic at Saratoga, by the way, is 51% male and 49% female. In that market, the female participation is extraordinary.

Mr. Bergstein: It is extraordinary, and of course, Saratoga is an exceptional place. Women love to go to Saratoga for obvious reasons. It is a very attractive location and a very attractive resort. Whether you live there or whether you visit there, you have been able to make your major races events in Saratoga, and it has helped build the success of your meetings there. Are there any questions from the audience, or any observations or comments as to media coverage or the lack thereof for the panel?

(inaudible question)

Mr. Bianconi: I agree, we actually nearly got on there on Valentine’s Day as a human-interest story. Our backup announcer called a race, and during the call he asked his girlfriend to marry him during the race. We got on all the local TV stations because of that and actually had a producer from Sports Center call and get the tape, but we got bumped by a couple that got married at the Tampa Bay hockey game that night. They must have chosen that as their Valentine’s night story over the announcer, but no ESPN producers have ever called me before, so that is as close as we have ever come.

Mr. Roberts: You know, maybe racing needs a little more tag team efforts too. Like, I think there was a great story that was played out Wednesday. The pick six at Santa Anita. It had a carryover of $1 million and before the gate opened for the first leg, there was like seven million dollars bet. Now that money was not all bet in California, it was bet across the country. That is a story that should have been pitched in every major city, even if it was just a few paragraphs, because there were three winning tickets, each worth $1.5 million.

Mr. Nader: That is a story for Squak Box and MSNBC. That is another area that we need to look at, because of the relationship between the financial markets and horse ownership, and we got a little bit more of that last year. One other thing is with a situation like the Belmont Stakes, where a horse is going for the Triple Crown, the coverage we get now is so much greater from the electronic media. We have cable coverage from the weather channel to everybody else. We can’t fit everybody in and that is a great situation. In terms of getting new exposure and getting new coverage for racing and to introduce them in the right atmosphere, that has been a big boost to the industry that hopefully pays dividends down the line.

Ms. Blanco: That is an interesting point about the pick six pool. I have a question for Bob and for Bill in that respect. When you get to that kind of money that you are talking about, it is interesting. From the news side of it, though, do editors view that as not wanting to promote gambling? I mean, if it is the lottery, it is on the evening news, but is it treated the same way?

Mr. Roberts: Hopefully we treat it the same way. They don’t, but they should.

Ms. Blanco: I get the feeling that a lot of times when you are talking about horse racing to the non-sports media, they look at it as a bad thing because of the gambling.

Mr. Nader: I don’t have a big problem with that though, Michele. If it is coverage and they are talking about the opportunity to make a big score and it is really related to horse racing, that is a good thing. What bothers me more with something like the New York Times, and I have enormous respect for Bill Findley and Joe Drake, who really do like horse racing, but when we do break through it is the criminal aspects. They get covered the way I wish the sport would be covered.

Mr. Reed: When it comes to gambling, if there is any sports editor in this country that does not understand why his paper prints the point spread and who does not understand the volume that it bet every week on professional football, they should not be in that job.

Mr. Bergstein: Speaking of sports editors, as a final word since we have run out of time, I don’t know how any local sports editor anywhere in the United States or Canada worth his salt could ignore a well-written, authoritative feature story on some local personality, and there are hundreds of them on every backstretch.

Years ago I worked at Western Harness in California, and was assigned as a kid when I first went there to the backstretch, and was not allowed on the front stretch. The job was simply to dig up feature stories and get them used. Whether it is a local cop, a fireman, or whomever, it had to be different. It seems to me that many of the publicity departments in this country don’t understand the difference between trying to churn out publicity and trying to write feature stories that have some relevance to the local scene.

Mr. Roberts: I think that is where it has got to be. You have to go for the grand slam. I met the Eternal Camnation people at a banquet in Atlantic City. They have this mare that is the all-time pacing champion for money. She is coming back again this year at age six or seven. I told my deputy sports editor about this story. These people live on a farm in Ohio, and they want me to go out and do a story. That will probably go out on the front sports page. It is the kind of feature you are talking about.

Mr. Bianconi: As far as harness racing is concerned, we get a lot better run out of a human interest story than a major racing story because our major races and horses really have zero name recognition out there outside of the Jug and the Hambletonian, so for my department, we are much better off with a local human interest story.

Ms. Blanco: Just from my experience in our market, you really need to come up with a lot of stories, and they are not all going to get accepted. Like Billy pointed out, publicists have to have kind of a tough skin because you hear “no” an awful lot. One position that I find myself in at Calder, because I kind of grew up there since my father was a trainer, I understand the horseman’s point of view on it and I have that community to deal with. They come to me constantly and want to know why they don’t see the stories about them in the newspaper. It is not for a lack of trying, but at some point you have to realize there is so much competition out there. Just speaking for south Florida, ten or fifteen years ago you did not have the professional sports franchises that we have now. So now your humble little story about somebody on the backstretch is competing against 15-20 other things on that editor’s plate.

Mr. Bergstein: You are competing against them, but if you don’t compete against them with those stories, you have no way to compete against them at all.

Ms. Blanco: You have to try, absolutely.

Mr. Bergstein: Any final word from you, Mr. Reed?

Mr. Reed: Just two things. In talking about the pick six thing, you have to understand that most tracks are accustomed to dealing with the sports department only. You have to expand your horizons. If it is not on the sports page, it certainly is a business page story. There are metro section stories, there are feature page stories. So, expand your horizons beyond the sports sections.

To any editor that would even be stupid enough to suggest that thoroughbred racing is not a sport, I would certainly make the argument that pound for pound jockeys are some of the best athletes. The traditional way to measure athletes is strength, decision-making, hand-eye coordination, right down the line. The best athlete in America today may be Jerry Bailey, which would be kind of an interesting thing to suggest to a magazine editor, wouldn’t it?

Mr. Bergstein: It certainly would. I suggested to Sports Illustrated that one story that has not been covered is John Campbell, who is the Jerry Bailey of harness racing, has won over $200 million in purses and many people in sports don’t even know who he is.

It would appear that our future is not in the agate type, which is disappearing rapidly, and it is not in a story about tonight’s race card, which is also disappearing rapidly, but it is in feature stories. If that is where our future is, management had better convey that message to their publicity directors throughout the country.

Mr. Reed: One final thing. I would like to issue all of you a challenge. In my opinion, from my experience of 40-plus years now, the racing industry leads the civilized world in round tables, conventions, discussions, summit meetings, and everybody always says we need to work harder and work together, yet nothing ever really changes. I would challenge everybody in this room to be able to talk about something that you have done at your track that has really had a positive impact when you come back here next year.

The final thing is this — horse racing is not dead. There are great stories and don’t let anybody beat you down and tell you otherwise.

Mr. Bergstein: On that eloquent message and great idea, we are going to close this convention. I want to thank you for being here until the end.