It’s a classic 2013 paradox: Even as we talk about the death of print and the decline of journalism as a money-making venture, the web has allowed for more valuable articles about niche sports like tennis to be published than ever before. The two weeks of the U.S. Open were a prime example. Granted, those are virtually the only two weeks of the year when tennis is seen as worthy of mainstream media attention in the United States; but this Open inspired more than its share of good reads. There were profiles of Li Na in the New York Times and Novak Djokovic in the New Yorker; a daily diet of enterprise pieces on the websites of the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today; and columns in new, hipster, web-only locales like Grantland, Sports on Earth, and For the Win. The majority of that information and perspective never would have been published before the Internet...destroyed the journalism business.
Anyway, it’s been a a while since I kept tabs on the tennis media. Here’s a look at a few of the stories that have come up since the Open, and a glance back at a couple that may have been overlooked amidst all of the action in New York.