How will sports writers establish an alibi?

I don't think adding color is silly. I think the initial post referencing an alibi was silly.

I think that if all you do is slap together facts that anyone can get on TV, radio or internet, you are making yourself moot.

However, what I really would like as a reader is insight and quotes from players as coaches.

If you tell me that Coach Paisley Peterson was nervously jiggling the change in his pockets on the big thrd-down play, that's good.

If you have a quote from Paisley saying that he was more nervous "than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," that's better.

If you also quote the fullback saying that he knew that the linebacker was going to blitz and leave him open for a pass up the middle, that's best.

 

As an editor, I was really happy if I could take a mediocre story and make it pretty good.

 

No, this is best.

 

I was taking off semi-cliche points. Plus, Paisley says that stuff all the time.

 

Good comparison to a beat reporter. I like it for copy deskers, too.

During this upcoming month of bloated (I hope) newspapers, I'll try to think of myself as the Hal Blaine or Carol Kaye of copy editors as I crank out the pages.

 

Man I don't know where you work. The gamers are totally full of color in the Midwest and East. That's all you can find in a gamer in which the writer actually has two hours to work. If the writer has 10-20 minutes cause of deadlines forget it.

 

Here's a pretty typical example of a game story with no color, the kind of story I referred to in the original post:

Carmelo Anthony scores season-high 35 in Knicks' win over Heat

This story was written by the hometown newspaper's writer, on a night when the team is not traveling. The story says it was updated at 1:02 a.m. ET, after an East Coast game.

Again, the question is: Why should a sports editor pay to send a reporter to cover a game, if the reporter is going to relay to the readers no information that was unavailable to the TV viewer?

I'm not saying the reporter watched it on TV. I'm saying that something has gone terribly wrong if he could have written the same story from a hotel room.

To recap this particular story, which is not atypical in newspapers today:
Pop culture reference
Opinion
Summary
Quote, in honor of the International Copy Editing Convention, which requires a quote within the first four grafs, whether or not it's a good quote
Stat
Quote
Stat
Quote
Stat
Quote
Opinion
Quote
Stat
Opinion
Stat

 

Except the quotes. Can't get quotes off the TV.

Honestly it's a gamer for an early December match up. You aren't going to write up 82 stories like they're game 7 of the NBA finals. Some games you just aren't going to get interesting color to write about. Some games are going to just be ho-hum in terms of color with the stuff surrounding the game being the most interesting. You aren't going to write about the determined look on the coach's face during a timeout in every game. There's a formula for writing these things on deadline. There's nothing wrong with that.

 

You can indeed get the quotes off TV when the postgame interviews are on MSG Network's Knicks Postgame Show Sponsored by Ford.

You make good arguments about it being a routine game. Now imagine an editor or publisher using those same points to say, we don't need to staff these games anymore. What would be your rebuttal when the editor or publisher says, We don't need to staff this. Honestly it's an early December match up. You aren't going to write up 82 stories like they're game 7 of the NBA finals.

Why cover the game if nothing in what you report to the public is not already known to the public? This seems like an approach that's identical to what one would do if the intent was to put oneself out of a job.

 

Because some stuff you see, hear, otherwise observe on gameday doesn't pay off until later. Being beat writer who is there everyday is about more than the story you are writing on deadline that night. The PR people know who is there every game. So do the clubhouse attendants and the talkative equipment managers.

I don't know if the bean counters will buy that reasoning anymore, and ideally the beat guy would turn in an awesome gamer every time, but there are reasons to go even if great stats and pages worth of quotes are available.

 

Because the gamer is not everything you do when you follow the team. You get information on injuries, line up changes, feature stories, etc. Basically game coverage is just a portion of what you do. Second not all of the quotes that are aired on TV are quotes you get. TV might have coach plus one or two players. You might focus on others or the focus of your gamer takes an angle that TV doesn't. Lastly 82 games means you have maybe 45 routine games that don't have intersting color but the other 37 have injuries, tempers and playoff implications that raise subtextual levels. If you pull reporters because you got bored by 45 games you miss the other 37 and subtle trends that TV is relying on the print guys to pick up on. Basically just because a gamer is written as routine doesn't mean that the reporter was sitting in a hotel room wanking off and filing reports that have no detail.

EDIT: Looks like Jake said my point a little more succinctly and a little sooner.

 

Those are good points in defense of staffing every game. Perhaps stronger, as you say, to also write a good story.
Of course, the main reason to include color is that it serves the reader.
And also pride. I mean, why do any part of journalism if the way you're doing it is generic? There might be better paying jobs for that.