Haven't seen a print copy of the DNJ for years but it was rare for Spears to have two articles a week on the DNJ website and I can't remember when he had an article picked up in the print edition of The Tennessean (although they can get a whole s--t load from their Knoxville affiliate).
I'm old enough to remember that both The Tennessean and the Nashville Banner each had an OVC beat writer, a city schools beat writer, a VU beat writer, a UT-K beat writer, a "city" high school beat writer, and the mid-state high school beat writer. Additionally, the DNJ had several writers covering MT and county high schools and I'm aware of other mid-state papers which had sports staffs which occasionally covered MT.
Now I suspect that mid-state newspapers and TV (which at one time were the exclusive places to get local sports news) probably don't have 10% of the sports reporters they had when I became a fan, and that's with the imperative to cover the added pro-sports. While the blame does not all go to mistakes made by those entities "dead tree media" and TV sports coverage has virtually stopped covering local colleges (with $EC exceptions) and high schools which are my main interest.
The problem I see which no one has given me an answer: For decades I was forced to comb through headlines, articles, and TV coverage of sports teams I don't care about in order to get a smidgen of MT info. At least fans of those teams knew MT existed if they read the sports pages or watched TV newscasts. Today, I suspect many MT students come to college following The Titans or Preds. Do they ever hear or see anything about MT sports through the media? How does the athletic department at a school like MT in a media market like ours reach out to students, alumni, and potential fans if they don't look for the info first. Damn if I know.