Anyone who has worked for a print news publication - remember them -- is acutely aware how difficult it can be to get adequate space to tell a story or report on an event.

The rules vary from town to town, country to country, but are usually governed by the concept of news worthiness, which is informed by the publication's editorial policy, readership interest and, indirectly, advertising dollars.

I knew the rules pretty well in Australia but had to adjust when I moved to the United States about a million years ago.

To state the obvious, in sport, the big four: the NFL, MLB, NBA and NFL dominate in large cities such as New York. Most everything else is secondary unless, for example, it's August and the US Open tennis is in town or there is a top-tier college football or basketball matchup.

When I worked fulltime for large US publications, I mainly covered business and finance but occasionally would seek to contribute a story about largely ignored games like cricket, rugby or some Olympic discipline to the sports desk. I got lucky a few times - usually with novelty pieces -- but for the most part knew the heated competition for column inches would result in a "thanks but no thanks".

As one fine sports editor at a very large publication said: "We can't even get enough space to publish all the stories about the sports we already cover."

Understandable, yet sometimes, merely the mention of an exotic sport would render a piece ‘too global'. Without laboring it, I had the potential for a great news story, using New York-based Pakistani and Jamaican sources when Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer died in mysterious circumstances at the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.

To put it simply, the response I got to the story proposal from the publication I was contracted to was "great story ... but who cares about an English sport?"

Aghhhh!! Only a quarter of the world's population, not to mention anyone with the slightest interest in south Asian politics, sport and the growing influence of fundamentalism in all walks of Pakistan life and its likely impact on US foreign policy.

But unless I could somehow prominently feature Bin Laden in the piece (I was tempted to invent the little known fact he was a terrific spin bowler with a great googly) it just didn't register. I suspect the response might be a little different in 2011.

A lot of Australian friends comment about the perception that Americans have a very narrow view of the world: a kind of ethnocentricity that apparently permeates US sport, culture and politics.

That generalization is just too, well, general for me. Admittedly I live in New York, which isn't really indicative of the US anyway, but ‘local' focus is a priority in all cultures not just here. The American situation is arguably magnified because it just so happens that, until the last decade or so, everybody was required to know more about the Superpower - the US - than it needed to know about us.

Bringing it back to sport for a moment, no-one can bemoan Americans' blanket coverage of the NFL at the expense of, say, a bit more international tennis when, for example, the Australian press can't even provide decent basic coverage of the national basketball teams, men and women, that are ranked in the top 10 in a truly global game that is played by vast numbers of people in every corner of the country.

We're all pre-occupied with our own backyards and parochial prejudices: for example, when I left Australia, rugby and rugby league were lucky to get a ‘brief' in a paper outside NSW or Queensland. Similarly AFL coverage in the northern states was largely about the obscene pants the players wear. Thankfully that's changed a bit, though you Aussie rules people still insist on wearing budgie-smuggling shorts.

Anyhoo, you get the point which finally, exhaustingly, I hear you say, brings me to the US media coverage of the current rugby World Cup in New Zealand. (Cue the soundtrack of silence punctuated only by crickets chirping).

It's been difficult to find anything much - and that's not surprising here in the States or even back in uncivilised parts of Australia- I know a lot of people in Melbourne probably aren't aware of anything happening in New Zealand other than dairy farming.

The American broadcaster NBC, for the first time ever, has shown a few matches, mainly via its barely-watched Olympic sports channel Universal Sports and a pay-for-view Internet service that ranks as the worst I've ever tried (and as an expat I've tried them all). Otherwise, it's been pretty well zilch in a country where about 100,000 people play rugby and the game is the third fastest growing team sport.

That is, until The Grey Lady, The New York Times trotted out a piece.

It deals with the notable issue of small teams getting whipped by the big guns: a complex conundrum for the game that may have to be addressed in the future. There are some (understandable) short cuts taken in the story and a few ignorant assertions that are frustrating for a rugby fan but, more importantly, I can't help but think the reporter and no doubt his editor have missed the angle - in fact turned it on its head.

The idea that a tournament of enormous scope such as the World Cup can successfully accommodate lesser nations who have been magnificently embraced by the New Zealand people alongside the awesome elite of the game is a testament to its strength, and provides meaningful insight into what makes rugby unique globally.

The angle taken - rugby is just trying to make itself more popular globally by including these countries -- is legitimate, but the context is missing. The dumbing-down of the yarn ends up negating its news value.

Trust me, I love hard news better than anyone, but this is staring a story in the face and deciding it must be told in the negative.

In the US, the cut-throat nature of the free market equates success only with victory. Rugby, too, is about winners and losers -- but that's not all. Understanding that is of vital importance to the rugby community and essential if wise tomes such as the Times are going to deliver stories that purport to hint at the essence of "foreign" pursuits or provide reportage and commentary on key issues.

In a discussion with a Yank friend, I asked if a team of amateurs from Germany got to within 25 points of a full-strength Green Bay Packers in meaningful competition, wouldn't that be notable? (Aussie football devotees swap Germany for Nauru and the Packers for Geelong).

"A competition like that will never happen," he said.

Exactly! But the rugby equivalent is as we speak in New Zealand and the locals are celebrating it with suitable verve.

And that, gentle sports enthusiasts, is both remarkable and newsworthy.