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Columnistosaurus

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!, Jan 9, 2012.

  1. henryhenry

    henryhenry Member

    odd column by kindred.

    he says he "can get news in a hundred places"

    but not opinion? hello.

    if you read between the lines this is a lament for the old hierarchy. like exiled russians in the 30s hoping for the return of power to the czar.

    the old hierarchy was kind to kindred, but it frustrated thousands of writers who now have outlets. and if they don't write like george vescey or tom boswell, so what? vescey and boswell didn't write like grantland rice and westbrook pegler. styles and tastes change. when they don't is the time to worry.
     
  2. lcjjdnh

    lcjjdnh Well-Known Member

    And you "damn well" know that the Internet contains plenty of well written, well thought out material too. Sure, there's plenty of bad stuff, too, but the same is true of newspapers. Unlike the old days, though, it's easy to filter out the bad stuff and seek out the good stuff. Newspapers long benefitted from having an essential monopoly on information delivery--the Internet destroyed that, to the benefit of most readers.
     
  3. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    SportsJournalists.com, where we love our extreme positions, all-or-nothing thinking, and take a few days to realize our common ground and where there is room (albeit in shrinking dimensions) for more than one narrow slice of a take in a must-win-this-argument debate.
     
  4. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    I don't have to win. I just have to cover.
     
  5. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    Pay the players! Er, columnists!
     
  6. Dave Kindred

    Dave Kindred Member

    Ok, I'll go away, but for the record: My only argument has been for the best journalism that can be done, wherever it is done, in print, online, on the air. I am not arguing against anything, I am not lamenting an age gone by. I have read more good sportswriting in the last two years, on the Internet, than I read in the first 25 years of my career, when the exchanges in the newspaper's library were my only regular sources. I have learned from the reading, I have learned by speaking with sportswriters younger than my ties, and I intend to learn more.
     
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Oh come on, Dave.




    Get some new ties.
     
  8. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    I'm not sure if you're deliberately attempting to be incorrect about my views in this thread, but you are achieving that effect.

    As for your guesses regarding my career, you at least made me chuckle a bit.

    So, congratulations.

    My apologies. I humbly retract my snark.
     
  9. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    Here's my story on column writing.

    I like doing it and I like to think I'm decent at it. While I haven't reserved a room in my home for trophies or anything, I've won my share of awards for column writing.

    Recently, I was catching up with my resume, going through old clips and I found one of my more recent first-place columns. I read it and I was embarrassed by it.

    I was ripping the administration of a college I covered for how they handled the release of some bad news (it was one of those 5 p.m. Friday news releases that show up on your email just as everybody is walking out the door for the weekend, thus avoiding any sort of accountability).

    Upon looking back at it, I thought it came across as whiny and complaining and lacking in depth. At the TIME, there was genuine frustration and it came across in the column and the judges LOVED it.

    I realized that I could make a career out of columns like that and for some, that's what a column should be. Never mind the facts, spark the conversation. Stir the pot.

    I did not include that column in my clips and certainly wouldn't want it to be considered typical of my work.

    By the way, I do recall outside influences encouraging me to enter it, which answers that question. People loved it.
     
  10. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    I don't like one-size-fits-all answers for newspapers. My feeling is that the worst thing we did to newspapers in the 1980s was homogenize them, to follow the formats of the contest winners. In the 1990s, we had the two-sports-columnists-are-not-enough craze. But on some papers, really, two columnists were one too many. On a few, two were two too many.

    I like to consider the market and what the staff does well. If you are blessed with a bunch of red-meat reporters who go get the news and can write it in ways that don't bore the shit out of people, it's a big mistake not to capitalize on that just because everyone is saying people can get the news somewhere else. They can, but maybe your staff does news and gamers really well. A section like that will convey a sense of urgency that others won't. I have experienced a couple places that really fucked themselves up by trying to be something they weren't and not appreciating what they did really well.

    My feeling is if you want readers, be really good at something and be genuine -- the paper's personality ought to be organic, not contrived. And you do not necessarily need to voice an opinion (or six) every day to get their attention.
     
  11. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    I initially hesitated to respond to this because am of two minds that don't necessarily run parallel. I think we need more columns. I think we need fewer columnists.

    Sport editors became, as Frank astutely points out, convinced during the 1990s that big-time columnists were the best way to brand their sections and develop reader loyalty. Perhaps they were momentarily correct: Columnists offer familiarity, and when you put together a good two- or three-columnist rotation, you created the healthy types of divisions between readers who preferred Jason Whitlock's aggressive opinions and readers who preferred Joe Posnanski's humble storytelling.

    Every sports section at the time strove to offer columnists with diverse outlooks, experiences and strengths. Many still do. But as those columnists became bigger and bigger brands in their markets and nationally, as Sports Reporters and Pardon the Interuption and Around the Horn and all the many local incarnates of those talking-head shows featuring sports columnists grew, columnists stretched themselves thinner and thinner. The same could be said for beat writers on a substantially smaller level.

    I am of the mind that many of the most talented newspaper sports columnists in this country don't actually earn their substantial wages through intelligent commentary. There's something to be said about branding. There's a reason The Washington Post held on to Michael Wilbon as long as it could, even just for the occasional blog posts. But we're saturated with famous columnists now, and I am of the opinion that the focus should shift away from the traditional all-sports columnist and to the role of the beat writer as an analyst and columnist.

    It's a tricky bridge to cross. It's one many traditionalists will vehemently stand up against. Very few major newspapers allow beat writers to write commentary, including those that lean liberal in the matter of analysis. In my opinion, it's the only way we'll survive, though.

    Yahoo and CBS have two of the best NBA columnists in the country, Adrian Wojnarowski and Ken Berger. While both can be pointed in their commentary, what makes them so special is their dogged reporting and tireless work ethic. Wojnarowski breaks more stories about the NBA than anyone else. He also writes strong-minded opinion columns, often on stories he broke in the first place. Berger does the same.

    As more big-name sports columnists grow too big for broadsheets, we need to refocus our attempts at developing content and using resources. We need to focus our expertise better in order to provide readers with things blogs and national writers can't offer consistently. We need to push breaking news and intelligent, thoroughly reported analysis and commentary. The best way to do this without breaking the bank is to use the resources we already have.

    There are many beat reporters out there who have covered teams for 20-plus years. It's crazy for us to be sitting on that lode of perspective and experience. The confines of traditional beat reporting don't allow that experience to shine through.

    Admittedly, not every quality beat reporter is cut out for analysis and commentary. But I've been around enough good ones to know that they often have some of the most incisive, intelligent opinions around on the teams they cover. I've been around for times when the beat reporter comes into the office after covering a coaching hire at State U and rambles on for 20 minutes about how there are all these reasons the hire was a poor choice for what the team needs now. I've then edited that reporter's story and seen all that intelligent analysis stripped away for the same reasons we've been told to be objective for years.

    True objectivity is a myth. We need to maintain fairness in our approach. But we also need to get more out of the dwindling staff that remains. We need to do what we can to stand out in the crowd, and the thing most newspapers have on their competitors is a wealth of experience and perspective.
     
  12. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Interesting comparison between bloggers and columnists and the idea that columnists are superior because of better access and command of the subject.
    I tend to agree though, that too many newspaper columns or those posted on sports websites could have been written by anyone. There isn't any original reporting, the analysis is something that can be deemed by anyone who follows a team on TV, radio or the net.
    A great column tells you something you didn't know before, has a point and is built on a premise as solid as house. Too many people think tossing out one-liners or trying to get a rise out of people by popping off is what being a columnist means these days. The problem isn't that bloggers are acting like they are columnists. It's the columnists acting like bloggers.
     
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