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Driving me bananas

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by sprtswrtr10, Dec 3, 2015.

  1. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Okay, "Dogs playing poker" guy. Whatever you think is art, fine by me.
     
  2. dirtybird

    dirtybird Well-Known Member

    What stats do you look for in the boxscore you run? I've always been in places where you track the stats that go in the paper and the rest are sorta gravy. I wouldn't advocate not keeping a running scoring log, but I'm not sure how that affects the quality. I'm not even sure knowing it was a 10-0 run vs. a rally makes much difference to the reader.

    As for tracking made/missed shots and rebounds, I found that often gave me a worse feel for the game. Instead of actually getting a sense for the ins and outs, I was concentrating on looking up and down from the sheet to make sure shots/rebounds were accounted for. Found it very distracting (especially since that job's deadline rarely gave you time to tabulate stats quick enough to build a story around them). Do you stat volleyball? I feel like lots of people write good to decent volleyball stories without much feel for the ins and outs of statting the game.

    (To be clear, he should listen to you and find a way to work tweeting around statting. But I also think if you don't ask for an in-depth box, keeping one is also gravy)
     
    BrendaStarr and SFIND like this.
  3. BDC99

    BDC99 Well-Known Member

    Nothing drives me more crazy than a writer trying to give me play by play. I dont need that shit. Give me scoring plays and a quick hit at the break. Some very good writers I follow just bog my feed down with shit I couldn't care less about.
     
    murphyc and SFIND like this.
  4. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    Let me ask a question, and share a story:

    Have you sat this person down, made your expectations clear, and showed him how do all the things you asked?

    I'm a magazine writer now. I write for the biggest sports media company in the world. 15 years ago, the first time I started covering preps, I had no idea how to do what I needed to do. I was constantly trying to write shit down, get color for stories, write a lede in my head (since I had 20 minutes to file after the game sometimes) and I was totally lost. I covered a big upset once, wrote a killer gamer, but couldn't file a box score (beyond who scored and when) because I couldn't tabulate all the stats fast enough before deadline. I had them in my notebook, but spread out over 11 pages of running gamer stuff.

    I probably would have gone on like that, clueless, if one of the veteran writer/editor guys (he'd covered preps for two decades) hadn't sat me down and said "Can I show you my method of how I do this?" (Multicolored pens, different boxes, keeping track of runs without taking up reams and reams of paper so I have it all in front of me as I'm writing/filing.) I literally still use some of that when I go and cover a live event (which is rare, but it happens).

    It's possible this is not an entirely an issue of thinking the "old ways" are outdated, but a bit of the fact that no one has offered him guidance and set clear expectations that will help him going forward, even as he tries to embrace new media.

    That old media veteran probably has no idea how much he helped me get to where I am now, because at my next job, I took at that with me and nailed the prep beat to the point where they moved me onto the CFB beat in two years. Then features. Then columns. Then I was writing for a magazine. Tell him some of that.
     
    Brian, Lugnuts and SnarkShark like this.
  5. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    If you have somebody cover a high school game, they have to get a box score. Either he/she keeps the box score stats himself/herself or get somebody else to do it (a friend, some kid at the game if he/she is accurate. You've got to run a box score on football/basketball because it gets names in the newspaper/online story AND you need the stats for your story. Tell him he's got to have stats/box, period! As you said, tweet if you can at the end of the quarter.
     
  6. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    It's really hard to Tweet and keep stats/play-by-play during games. And I can understand your writer feeling pressure to keep up with whoever else might be tweeting.

    Your guy also needs to do what the boss says and not make excuses.

    I also understand that it's a lot of work to keep all this play-by-play that may never be used. But you want to be as well armed with information as possible, whether you use it or not. Your writer's goal should be to find something special/unique/interesting about every game. It may be a stat this time, an injury next time, a great quote from a benchwarmer another time.

    I would sit down with the writer and say you understand the conflicts/pressures/difficulties. Point out what he does well but also that he needs to do what you ask.

    Also perhaps suggest that he could recruit a high school student/teacher/coach/aspiring sports writer to help at games. Maybe with Tweeting or with stats.

    Good luck.
     
  7. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    DD's take is spot on. I was able to tweet, take stats, shoot a little rudimentary video, etc., during games, but that's because the fundamental part (taking the stats) was total second nature to me. The only time I was try to shoot any game video was behind the end zone if there was a play on the 1, that way, I wouldn't get behind on stats. Honestly, I don't think newspaper videos should have much in the way of game action, anyway. It usually sucks. It's shot from an iPhone. Most of my video consisted of pre-game color (bands, players running on the field, things like that) and postgame interviews. As for tweeting, NO ONE should be tweeting PxP from high school games. Scoring plays and ends of quarters. That's as far as you need to go. Anyone who wants to go deeper is at the game. It can be done, but maybe you tell your guy to cool it on the social media/video stuff for a couple of weeks until he really gets the hang of taking stats. And if he bristles, it's your show, and you put your foot down.
     
    murphyc likes this.
  8. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Agree that any video from reporters at a high school game should be pregrame or postgame celebration or players/coaches talking.

    Maybe some fans. No action.
     
  9. SFIND

    SFIND Well-Known Member

    I'm glad my editor doesn't make me keep a full box for the sake of keeping a full box and made/missed shots, turnovers, rebounds, assists, etc. That was 2005 stuff for us. There's no way I could do it shooting photos, video and tweeting every game. We did away with printing high school boxes a few years ago and we later dumped a daily agate page, too. I don't think we've had more than 10 total complaints in the years that have followed. Besides the fact that you can get a full box on your phone minutes after any NCAA or professional event, many HS conferences around us now have their own websites that are nothing but schedules and score reporting. The schools have statkeepers that load the stats onto the site either immediately after the game (if they're using the website's software to track stats), later that night or the next day at the absolute latest. We can't compete with the high schools having their boxes up online soon after the game. The conference sites have been around for nearly a decade now themselves, and every parent/grandparent knows to go there to look for scores and stats. Since our deadlines have been cut back 90 minutes (at best) since I started last decade, there's really no time to type up a full box anyway if the story is going to be of any quality.

    I also respectfully disagree with Ace and others about not recording or using game action in videos. Has anyone ever tuned into Sportscenter to see a talking head coach or clips of fans or a celebration? I've never done that. I want to see highlights. Even if all you have is an iPhone, you should be able to park yourself under the basket and get good video of shots in the post or three's from either corner. Every video I make is a mix of highlights and interviews edited together. Now I'm the first one to question doing videos at all because I've seen the numbers for our views, and they're not high. They're not high at any other paper around me, either, based on the people I've talked to. But if I'm made to do it by management, I'm going to do it at the highest quality I can, and just throwing up a video of a talking head is the easy way out (and doesn't tell a story).

    One thing I know is very worthwhile is our photo galleries. They get a lot of pageviews. I've grown to enjoy photography, and I'm slowly enjoying the videography more (thanks in part to better HD cameras that my shop bought last summer that produce higher quality video). The separate photo galleries easily draw as much or more pageviews than the stories themselves. Since were essentially getting double the page views for every game (because most people who read the story click to go to the photo gallery), it is time well spent.

    To the OP, I respectfully disagree that you need to keep stats to be aware of the flow of the game. I can tell if a center over the course of the game has had a good night rebounding. I may not know if he had 10 rebounds or 14 rebounds, but I notice enough during the game to be aware of it. I can also notice when someone stands out with assists, turns the ball over a lot of has a bad shooting night, has a hot passing night in football, makes a lot of sacks, has a lot of pancake blocks, etc. I don't need to be making marks in a notebook to see that type of stuff as it unfolds. (That said, though, if I was your reporter I would keep stats as you wish and follow your and your shop's rules.)

    I have complained on here before about juggling all these duties for every game I cover. Since I've started, more of my stories have turned out mediocre (for the print version, anyway) because I shoot/tweet all game long and have 30 minutes (or less) afterward to write it up. But as I've got more experience juggling, I've got better at doing it all (and now start writing my story during breaks on Microsoft Word on my phone).

    I do miss the days when I started 10 years ago of being able to show up at game, stay in the press box/at the scorer's table for all of it, do nothing but keep stats and work on the story during the game, and write it up after. No photos and video to shoot and edit, no tweeting during the game. But I've had to adapt.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2015
  10. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    My only thing about video, in regard to highlights. With preps, you're generally competing against a local television station. They'll have professional highlights shot with a real camera while the newspaper will have a video of random highlights shot on a phone. Newspapers write and tell the story better. TV stations shoot video better. Why not concentrate on our strengths?
     
  11. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Even before being asked to shoot video, always found keeping track of attempts difficult, if not impossible, while keeping rebounds as well as simple play-by-play when covering prep basketball. Having said that, though, a reporter who doesn't learn how to keep the basics for him/herself needs to learn to keep the basics, in all sports. A few years back, covered a softball all-star game at a local college's stadium. Was trying my damndest to keep score (game rules allowed all 15 players to bat, whether they were playing the field or not), when a student who was stringing for another paper in our chain came up and asked if someone was keeping play-by-play like was done at the college's games, and could he borrow our stats? No, and no ... I was on deadline, after all. When I do cover college and pro games, I'm thankful the PBP sheets are there, and stats beyond the basics, but I don't feel at their mercy.
     
  12. Geoff Baker

    Geoff Baker New Member

    Haven't written in here before, but enjoy the discussions and wanted to chime in on this particular one. I'm not sure that requiring preps writers to keep detailed logs of stats in high school games is the best use of their time, nor will it prepare them all that well for the future. Yes, we want writers to pay attention to games, but as a previous commenter noted, the best game stories often contain very few numbers. You and I are the same age (I turn 47 in two weeks) and grew up under the same teachings and mindsets. Nowadays, game stories really are becoming an afterthought in the play-by-play retelling of events for newspapers because most readers see stuff on TV and many online blogs will recap game details long before a paper comes out.

    I realize high school sports are somewhat different from college and pro in terms of overall exposure, but honestly, I think your readers might appreciate more colorful, feature-type gamers just as much as a comprehensive, stats-filled one. If your goal is to prepare your writer and paper for the future, you might consider that the future of all papers is shifting away from the "what happened yesterday" type of gamers to more meaningful coverage. I gave a talk recently and mentioned that one of the bigger threats to good sports journalism is how some young writers are being molded by sports editors into focusing too heavily on game play-by-play and not enough on the bigger picture. There are some fantastic stories behind the players and games, even at a high school level. I read a roundtable recently conducted by a handful of some of the top NFL beat writers in the business and all of them described their favorite pieces of work as having been off-field stories.

    My fear is that too many young beat writers get melded into thinking it's all about the game, keeping things limited to on-field activity and never straying from within those borders. I've seen too many college and pro beat writers adopt much the same mentality and assume it isn't their job to explore topics more deeply, especially off the field.

    Please understand, I am not at all suggesting this is your intention. But it could be that asking a writer to focus too heavily on game detail and minutae might encourage him or her not to broaden their horizons. And digital is a huge part of our business now and will be down the road, whether we like it or not. Instead of encouraging over-emphaiss on stats, I would demand the writer produce at least one good enterprise story per week off his beat and start leaning more towards feature-specific game stories.

    I do agree that tweeting play-by-play is a waste of everybody's time. Frequent updates (like after each quarter) are not. But a better use of the writer's digital time might be compiling video that can be edited and posted online at some point during the week? I agree with you that the writer should focus on the game. But he should also be learning to think more deeply and tell stories that go beyond what any blogger sitting in the stands might later recap on a home computer. Let him learn to use his access to get at deeper stories that might draw in more readers, even off a gamer. Especially off a gamer, the structure of which was already looking dated by the late 1990s.

    If it's the writer's future we're worried about, those skills on becoming more than a game-recapper will serve him immensely well once he moves on to covering bigger sports -- where stats are all tracked instantly in most cases. And if it's the future of the newspaper business we're worried about, training our beat writers to be better than the average blogger sitting at home recapping games is a must. They need to learn right now, at their beginning, how to not confine themselves within an outdated box. How to respect the print product, but also embrace digital as that is still the present and future of the industry. It is possible to do both and to produce better journalism that merely a detailed game recap.

    Just my two cents and possible suggestions. I don't pretend to have all the answers. If I did, I'd be making sure far fewer journalists get put out of work this coming year. But times have changed. And the gamers we all used to write 20 years ago, whether covering preps or some bigger level of sports, are simply changing on-the-fly. But this was a good discussion to seek input on and I'm glad so many are chiming in. Cheers!
     
    murphyc likes this.
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