From Sports Writing To Writing For School's Website

Could be. We'll find out soon, although he never covered the football team for the Post-Gazette.

 

Oh, I definitely get this feeling from the school I cover. They used to tip me off on a lot of things. Not so much any more. My main competition is the school's web site, and seeing as we have a no anonymous source policy and they have all of the insiders, I suspect they'll kick my ass up and down the field any time they want to when it comes to breaking news about hires, new projects on campus and what not.

 

I hired somebody to write exclusively for the website this year with the plan that the position will become fuil-time once my university's hiring freeze is over. I am using an intern now, but will look for an unemployed sportswriter next spring. I have a few in mind.

 

I am concerned about the amount of freedom any in-house writer would have, though. College athletic writing is a lot of back-patting and glowing profiles, sure, but it can also be one of the seedier parts of the sports world. I'd think a coach would be able to bend the ear of an SID a lot harder than he would an editor.

Nobody works completely free, obviously, but I haven't seen too many "recruiting scandal" stories on CSTV in the past few years.

 

That's what I am talking about Cosmo. The current problems in the newspaper industry (less space, less staff, etc.) means the room that used to be used for a soccer story no longer exists. You still work hard to cover hoops and football, but the smaller sports coverage has disappeared (not necessarily in your paper but across the nation).

As for the thoughts that students and interns will take over sports information, I am not sure that will happen. Anybody who could write reasonably well used to be able to do my job, now, with desktop publishing, web sites, etc. you need to have a decent skill-set to work in the office. School's can't afford to turn that stuff over to students.

I have also seen a trend away from hiring interns lately simply because there are less qualified kids coming out of college every year and it is a big fight to get a decent intern. The bigger school is ditching interns in favor of entry level full-time staff.

As for the freedom that a writer is going to have, I am sure that you are right. If we hire Joe Schmoe from the local daily to take advantage of his reputation, the readers wouldn't be getting the real Joe because although you may see his true writing skills in most of his stories, the more negative stories or investigative pieces wouldn't be part of the school's website coverage. That would be the trade off that the writer would need to accept as Tdonegan points out