I get the feeling that some people have become too dependent on the internet as a source of information about our sport. As the publisher of two newsletters(print and electronic), this is a subject near and dear to my heart (and to those of other publishers).
While it's great to get so much free "stuff" at the click of a button, I'd like to think there is still some value to having traditional information vehicles, such as old (or current) copies of Track and Field News, within reach to check on an item.
Roger Ruth had trouble finding the correct dates on the 'net concerning the IAAF qualifying "window", but that information was readily available in two books that have been available for more than a month now--the "2003 USATF Media Guide & FAST Annual" and "Athletics 2003", the indispensable book put out by Peter Matthews each year.
I'm not picking on Roger here, just pointing out what seems to me to be a disturbing trend among "hardcore" track fans.
Walt Murphy
Walt
I think the issue is more of timeliness of research. The Internet has lead to each of us getting information very quickly, and wanting to respond very quickly. In the past, we would have to wait days or weeks to get meet results if they were not printed in the local paper. The other issue is that not all of the relevant information is in a single publication.
For example, Roger would have to know that the IAAF standards were published in the two books you listed (and remember that the USATF Media Guide and FAST Annual were only merged recently) in order to find them. He might have had to go through many different publications before finding the info he wanted. Instead, he was able to use the powerful search engine of the Internet to find a reference. Unfortunately, it had the wrong information (and BTW, there is no guarantee that the info in the books would be correct either).
The value of the printed material is in several ways: portability (and that might change with technology), ease of immediate access (don't have to start a computer), reliability of archives (paper vs. obsolete data media), and depth of discussion and analysis. It's this latter aspect which really brings the greatest advantage in my mind. It's difficult to read a long article on the computer, and difficult to highlight passages for later review. Printed magazines and newsletters allow this type of reading. The Internet has the advantages of immediacy, ease of searching, ease of quantitative analysis (using electronic data), and ease of updating and correcting information. For example, the PV standards can be easily corrected on the relevant web sites--that couldn't happen in the Media Guide.
Richard McCann
