For the future health of the game, there have to be more young voices that are prominent guide the game.  The way that the game is sold and marketed to the public has to appeal to an audience that skews younger.  And, the media that cover the sport and present it to fans and the public alike has to learn to appeal to the younger generation of golf and sports fan.  All of this has to happen - and fast. 

Over a series of posts, we will take a look at each of the aspects of the game that suffer from the older slant.  We'll frame the problem of excluding youth from the sport and talk about ways in which we can improve the game by making the sport a little bit younger.

In part two of our series, we look at golf and the media.

Part 2: Golf and the Media

This week, Golf Digest announced that legendary golf writer Dan Jenkins had found his way onto Twitter.  Take that for what it's worth, but I doubt that Mr. Jenkins will be able to Tweet as beautifully in 140 characters as he could write from his manual typewriter.  He was one of the last writers to abandon the typewriter for the computer-based word processor.  The gesture of having Dan Jenkins on a social media service, though, is pretty symbolic.

It is an attempt to bridge the gap between two very distinct eras of golf journalism: the one we have exited but hold on to, and the one that we need to fully embrace.

The past eighteen months has shown the golf media that it is going to need to reform itself in order to survive, much less thrive.  In many ways, the obituary of the golf beat writer has already been written.  Perhaps one of the final blows to the notion was when Jim McCabe was let go at the Boston Globe.  There are few writers left at newspapers that exclusively write about golf.  Unlike team sports, golf has few local ties on a consistent basis.  It made it an easy target of cuts at newspapers. 

The diffusion of golf beat writers has been a great opportunity for the digital journalism world to pick up guys who still have many great columns in them.  All of the major golf publications have benefited in some fashion with addition depth.  Golf Channel's .com team has probably grown the most with the pick ups of Randall Mell and Rex Hoggard to complement their team.  It has made their site deeper and stronger with content.  The PGA Tour has done the same.

The venerable names picked up by these major portals to golf news earned their way through impressive careers.  In many ways, though, the scramble to capture the writers so stupidly discarded by newspapers has kind of hurt the movement of golf journalism into this century.  At the least, it has slowed it down considerably.

New media - not just golf blogs - has been something that has been embraced by the golf community in a sporadic fashion and only in niches.  Golfweek TV is a great concept.  Golf.com's Facebook application is solid idea.  All of the major sites are dabbling in video and social media content. 

The thing is, though, that the use of these new ways to communicate with people are being used in one of two ways - to extend the reach of established golf writers or as a niche experiment starring journalists that are underpromoted. 

The frustration of my generation (not just with golf journalism, obviously) is that we feel we deserve to be at the top of the world at our earliest convenience.  My generation does not want to have to wait their turn to be heard and succeed.  My generation is "me first" and self-promotional.  Those aspects often turn off the generation before me because the prior generations complain that they had to earn everything that they did and will hold onto what they have achieved with everything that they have.

The flip side to that argument is that the drive to reach the apex yesterday compels some really great stuff out of my generation.  This carries back into golf journalism.  Take a look around and it is pretty easy to catch.  Golf blogs come up frequently here, but there is a great pool of young golf talent that is producing good stuff.  They write thought-provoking stories, cover the same topics as the big guys, innovate with video and social media-based content, and push the envelope. 

Our work often leads to imitation from the mainstream media.  The problem with our approach is that we have to make what we do public in order to get our names out there.  This leaves what we do open to the sincerest form of flattery.  It also leaves us in relative anonymity.  Bloggers don't really get paid much (if at all) and the attention and dedication required to keep up with the big boys is daunting at times.  It can cause burn out, and golf loses something when a promising writer folds up shop.

But it's not just bloggers.  People like Max Adler, Win McMurry (their names were drawn from a pool of reporters that I am familiar with, they didn't ask to be mentioned by me), and a host of other great talent are already in the professional ranks.  Often, their work is not promoted quite as much as it should be.  It's good.  It can just be tough to find - either left in some dark corner of a website or on a sidebar so tiny that you couldn't embed an animated smiley face in there.

What I'm saying is that golf media needs to do a better job of co-mingling between generations.  Shuttering the experience and talent of writers who have been around for a decade or two or four is ridiculous.  At the same time, it's also equally silly to stifle the growth of young voices and personalities who have a lot to add to the telling of golf's story.  They're innovative and compeling and tell our side of the game.

Perhaps younger writers and personalities that are showcased could help connect younger people better to the sport.  In fact, I know that to be true.  Take a look at ESPN.  Their target audience is men under the age of 25 and they capture their attention better than anyone.  Many of their "talking heads" are unlistenable to me, but they must be doing something right...that golf can do better.

Meanwhile, the audience for golf is decidedly older.  On average, about half of people that watch golf on TV are older than 55 years of age.  Make it almost 70% if we start the count at age 45.  Less than 13% of golf viewers are under 25. 

Undoubtedly, golf can do a better job of capturing that younger audience by connecting with what interests young people.  Yes, there is a barrier in making golf itself cool to younger people.  It is something that has to be addressed alongside this issue.  (We already covered that in part 1 of this series.)

Golf cannot get younger unless the voices that try to explain it get a little younger on the average.  Again, my plea doesn't imply that we should drop Gary Van Sickle off at the retirement home because his son is in college.  Hardly.  Rather, I'm saying that perhaps golf.com would benefit from having a voice closer to his son's age along with his.

Luke Russert was hired by NBC News after his father Tim's death in order to cover the voice of young people in the 2008 election.  That hire turned out to be a disaster for a variety of reasons and could probably be best summed up as a PR move.  But, NBC News had the right idea - just the wrong person.

The journalism establishment in golf should not necessarily equate youth with any of the following terms: incompetence, inexperience, or Twitter.  Give these voices a chance to connect with an audience of their peers and perhaps the result will be a winner for everyone - regardless of age.  After all, if Dan Jenkins can be good enough to patronize Twitter, then can't the major golf news outlets prop up some young bucks?