Esquire article on how to save sports journalism

Picked up from Romenesko:


http://www.esquire.com/features/chuck-klostermans-america/klosterman1007

Item 60, about withholding information to make it clearer to readers, is interesting, even if it does make my head hurt.

 

It is interesting, especially given the example that he uses in item 60. Not to point the finger solely at ESPN - but it's probably the only outlet capable of providing these types of updates so often - had there not been updates every day or so coming out of camp, it would have been a lot less confusing. Kobe's in camp, playing with the Lakers, has (from what I hear) a smile on his face and is going about his business. Instead of sensationalizing every small moment of those two weeks (Kobe reiterates trade demand over sandwich; Kobe backs off trade demand when putting bagel in toaster; Kobe again wants trade upon removing bagel from said toaster) and just waiting until it played out, we could have easily just summed up that Kobe Bryant wasn't happy with his situation but accepted it.

 

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/47040/

 

The Esquire feature on Iran was a good read, too. Though it was far more unnerving.

 

Sorry, looked, didn't see it.

And EB, while this thread will probably die quickly because of the other one, just want to note, constant updates -- as with the Kobe story -- are issues for all of the major sports websites out there, not just ESPN. And what's true at 2 p.m. isn't always true at 6 p.m., which can be a major pain in the ass.

But as he also noted, what are you going to do? Sit on the first story with the assumption it will change later? Not run the latest?

There's no solution.

 

Interesting read. Hard not to agree with his No. 60 idea. Things change so quickly on a story like the example he gave, that it's useless to update it every few hours.

 

The problem with his No. 60 idea is that it assumes everyone is going to have access to information at the same time. The reason Web sites update so often is the same reason TV and radio do -- because someone who was reading, listening or watching at 2 p.m. might not be back at 6 p.m., or even 2:15 p.m. So a grand cabal of sports journalism will meet to decide when the story is ready to come out of the oven and be served as true piping-hot news? No.

 

Exactly, think about it. It's impossible.

Story comes, you post it. It changes completely, you post it. Changes again, you post it.

No choice.

 

it's always easiest for the guys who are not actually doing the work to tell the rest of us the right way to do it.

 

It is, and always has been, implicit in any news transmitted by any format from the Internet back to the Pony Express that information is presented as known at a given moment, and is subject to change in the future. Can't be helped. But really, most readers are smart enough to figure that out and accept it. That's because they're smart enough to read.

 

I saw the other thread when it was current and I didn't comment because Klosterman seems to be writing mostly about TV and A.) I didn't want to suggest how to "save" an industry in which I have no experience and B.) while TV sports certainly does some journalism, I think it's probably always been more about entertainment than journalism and I'm not convinced that fixing the journalism part necessarily is what would help them as a business and C.) my knee-jerk is to automatically take a contrary positition just because it's Klosterman writing it and I happen to believe that the way to improve my favorite magazine is to stop putting Klosterman in it and D.) unless TV people are vastly different from newspaper types, somehow I doubt they're going to see Klosterman's advice as their salvation because all he does is identify what sucks and offers no new and exciting ideas for anything to replace the suckage.

 

Klosterman was (and still is) a journalist. He worked as a reporter in South Dakota and then the Akron-Beacon Journal, before moving into the magazine business with Spin, Esquire. Not to mention the four? books he's written. I'm not sure how much sports writing he's done other than the ESPN.com columns, but he's not the newspaper virgin you make him out to be.