I spent the weekend in Texas visiting a few friends of mine. While I was there, I picked up a copy of the Houston Chronicle. Inside the Chronicle was an interesting column from Richard Justice, about Memphis coach John Calipari.

Justice argues in the column that Calipari has played the “respect card,” numerous times throughout the year, telling his players that nobody believes they are that good.

After reading Justice’s column, I surfed the Internet to see what my local paper, The Orlando Sentinel, had to say about the Final Four. I ended up finding David Whitley’s column about the previous night’s games.

In his column Whitley argues that Calipari needs to lighten up, and stop playing the “us against the world card.”

Essentially, Justice and Whitley wrote basically the same column, even using some of the same quotes. While there words were different, and some of their ideas were different, the point in both was the same: Memphis is good, and Calipari has gotten his team to believe that people don’t believe in them.

This post is not meant to slam Justice or Whitley, I enjoy reading their work most of the time. I also realize that a lot of writers end up writing similar columns all the time, and use some of the same quotes, that’s just a part of the business.

My problem is this, with the newspaper business seemingly shrinking by the week, wouldn’t it have been in the Sentinel’s best interest to just save its money and use Justice’s column, or someone’s else’s in the Sunday edition?

I am all for sending a local columnist to a big event, if there is a local angle to cover, but in this case, I don’t see an Orlando angle. It used to be that local columnists, like Whitely, were a reader’s link to a bigger stage. It was a big deal to send a columnist to a national event, because that columnist represented the city. The local columnist could give readers a taste of what it was like in a different place.

We live in a different world now though. How many people are really picking up the newspaper anymore who care whether a local columinst is at an event or not? In a matter of seconds, readers can be in any number of different places, and read any number of different things on the Internet. With the way the newspaper business has been lately, I would rather the Sentinel save its money, and send its writers to events that have more local ties to them. The days are gone when it’s a big deal to a have a local columnist cover a big event, unless there is a local angle to cover.