Here in the Bay Area, we do not get much in the way of coverage from traditional outlets. The San Francisco Chronicle doesn’t seem to realize that soccer exists. Elliott Almond at the San Jose Mercury News is really the only full-timer in the local newspaper business, and even he gets shuttled off to cover college sports on occasion. With an eye toward providing more independent coverage of soccer in this area, former internet soccer writer Jay Hipps started the website Center Line Soccer back in 2007, and invited Jeff Carlisle (a freelance writer known for his work at ESPN.com) to be a main writer. Others joined the crew including photographers and features writers. Carlisle has recently moved to ESPN.com full time, and now I have been elevated to his position at Center Line, helping to get the word out on the Quakes, FC Gold Pride, and other soccer news around the Bay.

My rewards do not come from a hefty paycheck in this endeavor, rather they follow from the acknowledgment of fans and followers of a job well done. I also welcome the comments and criticism of my readers for I certainly can not improve the quality of my work in a vacuum. Maybe, with time and practice, some of the better amateur journalists will be able to carve out careers covering soccer. However, until that future arrives, may those dedicated to sharing their passion for the game through local soccer coverage continue to flourish. I know these writers will always have my support.

I mentioned The Offside in this essay because of its fairly high profile, and I’m not sure how many readers understand that its aim is to be a network of opinion blogs rather than to offer traditional news coverage.

Your criticism is certainly fair. But I think an orange does fall short of the mark for the person hunting for an apple that’s nowhere to be found.

Regardless, keep up the good work.

But the aim of a site like The Offside is precisely that: to provide a network of fan authored blogs, not to provide unbiased professional journalism.

So it’s a little harsh to say that those sites fall short just because they’re exactly what they’re intended to be. It’s like saying an apple falls short of being an orange.

Juan, I was very lucky at my old paper that we had an editor who loved soccer and a very strong soccer reporter. For the last World Cup, we put it on the front page for weeks. I spent a good amount of time watching games in tiny social clubs with Argentines and Serbians and German-supporting Costa Ricans. Very rare to see, but it was a small daily (~30,000 circulation) that catered to working-class immigrants and first-generation Americans, many of whom love the sport.

Brian, thanks for letting me know about the local media attention in Houston. I’ve added your podcast to my playlist, so I’ll check out your show.

Daniel, I have a lot of appreciation for bloggers. I think it’s fantastic that people are willing to pitch in where they see a need for news to be covered. And yes, the growth of soccer (and the coverage of it) has been a very slow process and will continue to be for a long time to come, I think.

I did some math a little while back and came up with this quasi business plan that you might find interesting:

http://american-soccer-news.com/?p=3764

I’m happy to see you have some appreciation for us bloggers. I know we aren’t all top notch journalists but at least we care enough to do something to make things better.

Coverage has improved this year thanks to the efforts of MLSsoccer.com writer Nick Thomas, Brian Jennings at Soccer365, and the people at Channel 2 and the Denver post. I think we are getting there, but its a slow process.

Hopefully the multitude of soccer blogs will encourage the growth of soccer coverage in the US, and eventually lead to the mainstream media giving soccer the sort of attention you describe in the final paragraph.