Every so often I do a google search for other NPL blogs. As time passes this exercise becomes less about discovery and more like a pulse check. So what’s the status? Well, South of the Boarder is still up and running, Round Ball Australia is pumping out broader football content, Front Page Football seems to be back after a hiatus… the landscape is a little bare to say the least, and its outlook is a little bleak.

This trend however is not indicative of a lack of interest in the league though, in fact, the opposite true. We are in a content quantity glory age where every game is streamed, each club produces daily media, and countless creators comment on the game in video form and on podcasts. The dearth of written content, at face value, appears to be an anomaly.

Why is written content struggling to keep up though. Well, on reason has been technological improvement supporting other mediums. As internet speeds have improved the supply of content to consumers has changed. Believe it or not, there was a time I would have to wait a few minutes for a YouTube video to buffer and at this time written content was king. My time online was overwhelmingly spent in front of a desktop computer to read and occasionally play games. But now things have changed, I don’t need to wait for the video to buffer, for the podcast to download, I can click it and play it. Like many others I am drawn to the most dense and engaging content which increasingly is not written.

What has also changed though is how I consume content, and I’m not talking the death of traditional media here, I’m talking about my phone. I used to scroll with a mouse at home, now I scroll with my finger anywhere and that means more variability in my consumption sessions. I am no longer in a quiet place for a set time, I am on my phone for a few minutes between work, in a noisy train, even for a few seconds during a boring conversation. At best these environments don’t make it easy to read, at worst, I don’t have the time to even start an article. What I have time for is headlines, memes, short videos or maybe a podcast while travelling.

This dynamic has been supercharged by media companies and their competition for attention. As algorithms become smarter at holding our attention we spend less time actively seeking out content and more time reliant on our feeds. We are trained to consume what they give us, rather than what we search for and this is increasingly either images, videos or at best for the written word – salacious headlines of articles I will never click to read.

What does this all mean for written NPL content? Firstly, other mediums like video podcast and images are more accessible. Secondly, people are spending less time in environments that encourage reading. Thirdly, habits are being changed to discourage the exposure and consumption of longer form reading.

There’s obviously another huge driver though. NPL media is not in competition with itself, it’s in competition with all other media. Writing about local football has to be chosen in priority to consumer’s other options which include global football, pop culture gossip, AI-slop, neighbourhood faceboook group posts and videos of Indian street food which seem to keep popping up.

The rise in the quality of content isn’t just suffocating written efforts, but has changed audience engagement. As content decisions become more passive, so does content interaction. Take a look at an old blog from South of the Boarder, each post has half a dozen comments and every so often you’d see voluntary contributions from fans. Internet forums were thriving with clubs including Melbourne Knights even having an active one back in the day. There might be more ‘content creators’ today than ever, but there are fewer people meaningfully engaging with content though community like comment and discussion.

Why do I mention this change in habit though? What does it have to do with written content? I think written content more than any other requires this feedback loops and uniquely thrives by offering a chance of response in the same medium. Comments on videos are not a level playing field for discussion, and no one is posting voice memos in response to podcasts. To emphasise this engagement consider the last thing you likely meaningfully engaged with – I’m willing to bet for many of you it was the comments section of a meme or clickbait headline. Clickbait for clickbait, the natural devolution of the once mighty comment section of a blog.

I’m not necessarily painting written word as some sort of media utopia though, I just want to explore the change of late. Gone are the days of pop up blogs like West of the Quarry, now are the days of pop up podcasts and Tiktok accounts, which enjoy greater opportunity for engagement and commercialisation. Speaking of…

Where written content appears to be consistently produced it is so within a few unsurprising environments. Professional media companies like Fairfax continue to produce football stories, albeit against a shrinking readership which is increasingly turning to alternative mediums. University students and aspiring journos are putting out regular write ups (see Front Page Football and the Round Ball Game). Niche media (like the Greek Community paper the Neos Kosmos) generate articles on teams of community interest. Each of these environments is fuelled by something beyond a passion for football, what is becoming less and less common is the passionate blogger that offers an individual voice in the chorus of pro-forma match reports and simple fact listing articles that increasingly seem to be taking the same tone.

Again, where are these unique voices? Podcasts like Suited and Booted, the NPL Victoria Pod, commentating the NPL Vicotria games. They are not writing any more. They don’t have to. Those who do must face an important fact. Writing is not about how many people read, it’s about who reads.

When you are chasing numbers, engagement and commercialisation it makes no sense to write. To compete against video or clickbait headlines, to write passionately only to have no one comment or worse comment without reading, to break a story only to have it stolen for a meme on an anonymous twitter page. Writing in this era increasingly feels like living in a vacuum. It’s a lonely process unlike what podcasting with friends or filming videos are. Even here on Blue and White Views, our blog have hit over 3,000 views but only about half of those are on written articles, who know how much people read them, and in comparison the views on our twitter posts massively outnumber our blog readership.

My experience on other blogs drove the creation of Blue and White Views on the basis of the following principle – written content cannot compete online. Full stop. Done. The medium has one safe space where it commands engagement – and that is in physical form. Fanzines, books, magazines, newsletters. My message to writers, particularly those in the NPL is this. If you want your content read, by all means put it up online (it is an accessible necessity) but please – print it off!

This goes out to clubs and the federation too. Physical content doesn’t compete with the algorithm and commands attention for your sponsors’ advertisements and messages from your board. Physical content joins personal archives, sits on coffee tables, invites engagement generates more ‘views’ than you would think.

I started this particular blog post wondering why there wasn’t more NPL content online that I could read while procrastinating at work, but I’ve come to realise I probably wouldn’t properly engage with it the way I’d think I’d like to. Yes, I want more NPL blogs, I want more South blogs, but what I really want is to fill my bookshelf with South books, and overload my coffee table with match day programs, magazines, and almanacs.