Jim Ecker says he sees a void in sports coverage in Eastern Iowa, from high school sports to smaller colleges and local professional leagues. And he thinks his latest venture, “The Ecker Sports Report” – a new website officially launching later this month – can successfully fill that void.
“I honestly believe that there’s a hunger and a market for the product we’re going to be delivering,” Mr. Ecker said. “The trick will be spreading the word.”
Background
This is far from the first foray into sports journalism for Mr. Ecker. He’s a veteran Cedar Rapids sports journalist with more than 50 years in the business.
He was named Iowa Sportswriter of the Year in 1995 while covering the Iowa Hawkeyes for The Cedar Rapids Gazette, where he spent 27 years on staff – serving as night editor, assistant sports editor, and covering University of Iowa football and women’s basketball for a decade.
He previously served as sports editor at newspapers in Fort Madison and Valparaiso, Indiana, before moving to Cedar Rapids in 1982.
After leaving the Gazette, Mr. wrote baseball stories for Perfect Game USA, then co-founded the Metro Sports Report in 2011 with former Gazette colleague Mike Koolbeck. That site covered Cedar Rapids and Marion-area high schools and drew more than a million page views annually for several years.
The site shut down in 2016, when Mr. Koolbeck moved out of state and Mr. Ecker became sports director at KMRY, one of the last remaining locally-owned radio stations in Cedar Rapids. He later purchased KMRY from retiring owner Rick Sellers in 2022. The station is currently for sale and being run day-to-day under a local management agreement.
Why the Ecker Sports Report?
Mr. Ecker said he’s reviving and expanding the business model from the former Metro Sports Report website model for the new Ecker Sports Report because local sports coverage has shrunk dramatically across the region. He pointed to sports reporting staff cuts at the Gazette and other media outlets in the Cedar Rapids area.
“It’s just a hard environment,” he said, for an industry “so reliant on advertising, which has become so splintered with digital.”
Mr. Ecker said the new website will cover 16 high schools, including all the high schools in Linn County and some in eastern Benton County – up from eight under the Metro Sports Report model. In addition, it will also cover four area colleges (Coe, Cornell, Kirkwood and Mount Mercy) and four other organizations – the Cedar Rapids Kernels, Cedar Rapids RoughRiders, Hawkeye Downs, and the Cedar Raptors women’s tackle football team.
He said the site’s coverage will extend to every varsity sport at every school, not just the high-profile sports like football and basketball. Sometimes it may just be a short summary of the event from a box score, while other events may be covered by a freelance writer with a full story and photos.
“Tennis, golf, cross country, you name it … every time they have a varsity event, we’ll have something,” he said.
He said his mission for the new site is partly personal.
“It bothers me that the Kernels, for instance, only get spot coverage now,” he said.
He also noted that in many communities, parents of local athletes no longer see their kids’ names in print – or even online in some cases.
“When I was a kid … if my name was ever in my town paper, my parents and relatives would cut it out and stick it in a scrapbook,” he said. “Well, you can’t do that anymore, for the most part, because newspapers don’t do that.”
Business model and revenue streams
Ecker said the key lesson from the Metro Sports Report’s failure to turn a profit was that a pure ad-supported model doesn’t work.
He said the new Ecker Sports Report site will rely on five distinct revenue sources:
- Paid subscriptions, at $36.50/year (10 cents a day), with a free trial period. “Would you give me $36.50 to get all of this coverage?” he said. “Come on, if you took your family of four to McDonald’s tonight, you’d spend $36.50 or more for one meal.” He said subscriptions should outweigh advertising “three to one, four to one, five to one.”
- Display advertising, with multiple tiers, including $100 per year for a team-page ad, $250 per year for a high-school homepage ad, $500 per year for ads on pro/college team pages, and $1,000 per year for the main homepage. He said he’s already secured a $6,000 title sponsor – Murray Elite Basketball, run by former Hawkeye player Kenyon Murray – and 12 “gold medal” sponsors at $1,000 each, along with in-kind trade deals with Allegra Printing and the Tidbits shopper newsletter.
- A “wire-style” content syndication to other outlets. The Ecker Sports Report has finalized a deal to supply sports content to the Vinton Eagle – whose former sports editor, Jeff Holmes, is a partner in Mr. Ecker’s new venture – and is in talks with the Linn News Letter in Central City and several area radio stations.
- Photo sales. A partnership with SmugMug will let the Ecker Sports Report sell individual event photos for 95 cents each, split between the company and photographer.
- Live events. The new company is presenting two showcase events later this month, including a high school baseball classic at Prospect Meadows Wednesday, July 29 and a softball classic at Mount Mercy Thursday, July 30. All graduating seniors from area high school baseball and softball teams have been invited to participate. The events are being funded by $250-per-team sponsorships and $5 gate admission for spectators. He said the two events will serve not as traditional “all-star” showcases, but “as a tribute to the seniors who contributed to their team this year in any way, in any contribution that they made.”
The site itself is set to launch Monday, July 27, just days before the two showcase events.
Financial expectations and structure
Mr. Ecker said his financial goals for the site’s first year are modest, but he sees a sustainable financial outlook for the project.
“I’d be disappointed if a year from now we’re not a $100,000 operation or more,” he said for the site’s fiscal year, which will run Aug. 1 to July 31.
He estimated reaching 2,000 to 5,000 paid subscribers over time, combined with the other revenue streams, could eventually generate $175,000-plus annually.
He said he’s managed to keep startup costs low, including $8,000 for website design, plus legal and accounting fees.
The company itself, legally named Ecker Media (doing business as the Ecker Sports Report), is structured as an S-corp, with Mr. Ecker owning 95% and Mr. Holmes – a former Gazette correspondent and Vinton Eagle sports editor – owning 5% as “an inducement” to join the project.
Freelancers, including college students and other contributors, will be paid $50 to $75 per assignment, he said.
Staffing
Beyond Mr. Holmes, Mr. Ecker named several contributors that have agreed to assist with coverage, including Mike Condon (a part-time Gazette contributor), Gazette correspondents Doug Miles and Ryan Pleggenkuhle, Ryan Suchomel (a former Gazette night sports editor and current sports editor of the Mount Vernon Lisbon Sun), and Ryan Murkin, director of content at Your Prep Sports in Johnson County.
Mr. Ecker said he’d also reached out to student journalists at Kirkwood, Mount Mercy and Coe to gauge possible interest.
Relationship with the Gazette
Mr. Ecker acknowledged his new venture will compete with The Gazette.
“I’d like to consider us friendly competitors … but certainly competition,” he said.
He also connected his project to the Gazette’s reduced schedule. The paper moved to publishing three times a week in print, rather than daily, in January 2025, but continues to publish online daily.
Why he thinks it can work
Mr. Ecker argued that his outlet fills a coverage gap competitors can’t or won’t fill, particularly for smaller schools like Vinton-Shellsburg, Benton Community, North Linn, Center Point-Urbana, Mount Vernon and Lisbon.
He estimated a potential subscriber base of 275,000 people across Linn and eastern Benton counties, and that “if we could get a couple of thousand (of them) to subscribe,” the venture would have a solid start.
He said he plans to promote the site in person “up and down Main Street,” and notes that a number of people are supporting his effort “sight unseen
While acknowledging he’s faced some skepticism – “a couple of people have said, ‘Ecker, you’re crazy, nobody’s ever going to pay for a website’” – he maintained the site’s subscription fee is modest enough to succeed, given the depth of coverage that will be offered.
He was candid that the venture is driven as much by mission and personal goals as by profit.
“What’s my motivation?” he said. “Old school journalism, ego, no doubt about it .. I want to serve the community, I want to serve the public. I think there’s a real hunger and a market for it.”
He suggested that if successful, the model could serve as a template for other shrinking media markets as traditional outlets continue to cut staff. He also said it could expand its reach to other Eastern Iowa schools beyond Linn and Benton counties.
And in part, he hopes the site can help cement his legacy with an admittedly “old-school” approach to sports coverage.
“I’ve been a professional journalist for 52 years,” he said. “A couple months after I graduated from school, I got hired as the one-man sports department down in Fort Madison. I’ve got sports journalism in my blood. I’m 74 years old, and I’ve got no hobbies whatsoever. I don’t play golf, and I love watching old westerns and movies on TV. I like to read. I’ve got a very active 14-year-old grandson, and I’ve spent a lot of time with him. But I’m not ready to retire just yet.”
