There was no report whatsoever on the Christchurch double header in the Press newspaper on Monday.
All there was was a photo of some Brazil players celebrating a goal.
There was one sentence mentioning the results of the two games tacked on to the end of a preview of the New Zealand team's next game.
Despite this being one of the biggest sport events of the year with one of the biggest crouds (15,928 for the second game). That's more than the Crusaders have been pulling this year.
A new low point in Press football coverage.
Is the Press a Fairfax paper? If so - I'm not surprised they didn't cover the games.
Yeah, It's a Fairfax paper so par for the course...
Fairfax titles include the Sunday Star-Times, Dominion Post, Waikato Times and the Press.
I sent a Letter to the Editor complaining - so let's see if they publish it.
Fairfax are increasingly moving away from a focus on their print media towards digital and a couple of weeks ago announced a new policy to do away with local editors, including sports editors and instead institute national editors for various departments including sport.
180 positions at Fairfax nationally were disestablished and 160 journalists asked to reapply for jobs under new descriptions.
I suspect that the Press and the Dominion Post as a result of Fairfax's restructuring, no longer even have their own sports editors.
You can see this is resulting in not bothering with covering local sports events in papers like the Press and Dominion Post with local sports reporters mostly commissioned to write stories to fit into their national digital strategy.
Not only was there no report on Sundays U-20 World Cup double header in Monday's Press newspaper, there was actually no report on Saturday's Canterbury Crusaders Super I5 rugby win over the Blues. Instead they published a generic Super 15 roundup article which didn't even mention the Crusaders game but was knocked off to cheaply provide one article for all their publications and save on paying local sports reporters to actually attend games involving local sides.
It seems counter-productive to reduce print content if they still want to sell newspapers.
The next step will be to introduce pay walls for the Stuff website etc. as this is what Fairfax have done in Australia.
The owners of the NZ Herald will inevitably start charging for access to their website too within the next couple of years...