Chicago Tribune eliminates Bears game stories

J-Dub has a point there. Haugh does a tremendous job on his Bears columns. No reason he couldn't expand his horizons, especially since Downey does such an abysmal job.

 

Novelists scratch their haircuts trying to dream up the sustained conflict that drives great writing.

The NFL delivers such conflict every freakin' Sunday. Yet here is a major newspaper that chooses not to engage the drama as a whole. It says, "Hey, reader, we've cut yesterday's novel into 20 or 30 little pieces, y'know, like a jigsaw puzzle. Paste 'em together properly and you'll see a story."

Someone a minute ago used the correct word to describe the Tribune's thinkiing. Suicidal. We have persuaded ourselves that no one reads, so we give them less reason to read. Put your best writer on the game. Tell him to be Shakespeare for an afternoon. Damn.

 

It's fashionable to say "kill the game story," but it's wrong. It is the most flexible, space-efficient way of doing the job. When it's a great game, the writer can focus on the action; when it's a crappy game he can go big picture or locker room news. And the writer and/or ASE get to make this decision on the fly, as the game ends or even between editions for the writethrough, instead of having to follow a template every time out. The Trib tries to avoid a game story and winds up spending four times the real estate to do it anyway. What a sad waste of resources and human brainpower.

I don't know, I think our people write pretty good gamers. There's certainly more there than you get from listening to the TV and radio people and far better perspective than you can get from the national Internet sites, which basically run AP -- without making the erroneous assumption that all your readers watched the game or get their news from the Net.

I think we have gotten into a very dangerous area of overplanning sports sections. This kind of control-freak, template coverage does prevent the occasional pratfalls of the past, but also much of the brilliance, too. It reminds me of Jurassic Park when the Jeff Goldblum character keeps warning that nature can't be contained. Neither can news. You can't expect to lock in on Friday for a Sunday game, or even at 5 p.m. for events that night. If you want to be fresh, you have to let what happens dictate your play, including graphics, not vice versa. Glass offices just have to realize that if they don't want a stale section, they either have to work later or trust the people at night to make decisions on the fly. And I am not talking just sports.

 

that said, what writers out there still write great game stories?

 

How do we know people don't read game stories? Where are the reader surveys on this? My biggest pet peeve is when people say "readers don't do this or that" without any way of possibly knowing. Maybe they don't read wire stories. But you cant convince me that Redskins fans dont read game stories in the Post on Monday morning.

 

I can imagine a few people ages 30-75 -- you know, people who read -- picking up the paper and thinking, "You know, the paper costs more, the pages are smaller, the articles are shorter and there's no story on the game ..."

 

For years, the Tribune's gamers have gotten shorter and shorter. Frankly, when I go to the Tribune the day after a game, I'm much more likely to read the notebook and the columns than the gamers.

I'm not necessarily for killing the gamer. I'm for killing the traditional gamer that way too many writers think needs to include a lot of play-by-play. The higher the level, the less play-by-play there should be. Give me insight, analysis but not a blow-by-blow (unless it's a Knicks-Nuggets gamer.)

 

I still read gamers, but I read them online. I think there's definitely still a need for traditional gamers to be written and put online.

But I'm with the previous poster who said the morning newspaper (ink-on-paper) game story should have very little play-by-play.

At least the Trib is trying to do something different. To put a TV spin on it, I think of P.T.I. -- a new way of presentation -- different from the typical studio show -- with the 'rundown' on the right side of the screen -- very inventive -- somebody took a risk. What they're finding is that P.T.I. is out-rating the SportsCenter that follows... and that folks are using P.T.I. as a way to get their sports news of the day.

The Trib's risk may not be working, but at least they're attempting a departure. Maybe they can play with it and come up with something better.

 

Images that come to mind regarding the ChiTrib and no Bears game stories:

Iceberg ... Titanic ... collision ... deck chairs ...

Newspaper editors need to spend their time and money putting out great sections instead of hiring consultants, designing prototypes and wasting hours trying to re-invent the wheel.

This idea sucks and kills forests for no good reason.

 

Or maybe we should train writers how to do gamers in a unique, captivating voice, how to look for forward spin, how to set the scene better, how to make the reader feel it. That, with a good column and well-played art, is what is needed; in combination, as one-stop shopping, it differentiates the paper product from the Net product. You send the reader to your Web site for quarter-by-quarter and stuff like that.

 

Just taking a read at pages two and three and I don't really dig it. I don't care that Grossman overthrew some receiver to kill a drive in the second quarter. That's far too much detail you wouldn't use in a gamer. And if that is supposed to replace a game story, it reads even more boring than a bad game story. You need a game story in the section.

 

Re: Don't think Skins fans are pining for the gamer on Monday morning. They'd sooner don a Cowboys jersey than read anything Redskins-related in the WP. A harsh crowd, those guys.