General ideas for a column?

Or maybe he can just PM it to you ...

 

To talking to people to find out what's currently a big issue in your community is great. You can also go back through the archives and figure out the issues that were big before. Find out whether some of those issues are still simmering beneath the surface.

 

Sorry, Jay. It's just that so many local columnists abuse the platform with crap about their fantasy football league, their job and their on-the-outside feelings about things that have nothing to do with their readership.

If you want to write about that, come to SportsJournalists.com, but if you want to do your job correctly, follow the advice you got here, as I'm sure you will.

 

Best advice I ever received was to read Red Smith and Jim Murray. I went to the library and picked up about four compilations two weeks before I started my first job and couldn't put them down. All I did for a month was unpack from the move and read Murray and Smith columns.

 

Look for anniversaries etc. Readers eat historical stuff up, and IMO historical pieces are really fun to report and write.

 

Haven't read Murray's compilations. I own Smith's on baseball, definitely a good purchase. I would also recommend reading the Best of Sportswriting books, scanning the Internet to read some of the top columnists and reporters, and scanning the sportspages.com top 10.

One more thing: Don't limit yourself to sportswriters. Branch out. Find Royko and Breslin columns.

 

The new high school seems like a rich vein for ideas. What will their athletic programs be? How does an athletic director launch a new athletic program? What's his budget? Go shopping with him when he buys 60 sets of football gear, for instance.
What will the team name and colours be? What's are their significance? How did they settle on those colours and that name and what else did they consider? How long will it be until they're competitive and how important is it that they be? What role is the community playing in helping the new athletic program get off the ground? Are there parents groups, community sponsorship...all that sort of thing.
I know it's July, but somebody should be able to answer those questions, and that should lead you somewhere else...

 

Agreed. With the new high school opening, you may want to ask some of the guys in your department about any rivalries that will be "going away" as a result and write about the history of those rivalries, key moments, big games, etc.

 

OK, I was a bit misinformed about the "new high school". It's actually just a new building. Apparently the old building was crap, but they are taking the same exact kids and moving them into a nicer building.

With that said, they have new facilities and a new astroturf field. Any ideas on this?

 

New building?
Talk to the AD or the senior coaches about memories of the old building/field. Greatest games they've ever been part of. How much history there is there. Are they taking anything from the old building to the new? Keepsakes, heirlooms, that kind of thing.
Cost of the new turf facility. How much use will it get? Will they sell a name to a title sponsor, have advertising on the field?
If there was a particularly memorable game from a coach's point of view, get him to remember it, and find one of the players he's talking about to remember their version...lots of stuff there too.

 

The only way I could even justify writing a column about a roommate playing Wii is if you can somehow tie that in to issues that are relevant to your readership.

A column shouldn't be a place where you just write about anything and everything under the sun. Write something that's relevant to your readership.