Getting bored with sports

See what you can add at the place you're at. And if it is an outside opportunity, accentuate the positives that you bring. Folks in sports typically have handled the most extreme deadlines, the craziest and longest hours, and from what I've seen, often crank out the highest volume of copy. They have the ability to take something pretty routine -- another game, four quarters or three periods or nine innings -- and write it differently from so many games they've covered before. Skill comes in handy covering that umpteenth court case, legislature hearing or gang killing.

Then when you get a chance to work on a feature, ideally your own idea, nail it and have fun. No need to lapse into old formulas.

 

Hey, you're preaching to the choir! But news people attach a stigma to sports people.

 

I understand every sentiment presented here. I'm now in my second stint in news. I worked in sports 14 years before leaving for news jobs and other jobs for about three years, and stupidly went back to sports a second time for three years, and left again.

Would I go back to sports a third time? In two words, hell, no. I'm 45 years old and have absolutely no interest in going back to working nights, weekends, and standing around locker stalls interviewing rich, naked, overgrown adolescent dumbshits. You take the good with the bad with any job in the industry, but I like the fact that what I write about now might actually have an impact on my tiny corner of the world, plus my evenings and weekends are largely mine to enjoy with my family. You can't put a price on that.

 

Two words.

Mill.

Rates.

I’ve done both. I’m currently “helping out” by writing some news after our main news reporter “quit.” (I’m still responsible for eight pages of sports, mind you…and getting the same pay).

Personally, I think you’re crazy. I’d rather put a fork in my eye than go back to news full-time (not because I don’t like covering “bad things,” but rather I am bored to tears by 99 per cent of the stuff I cover in news).

There have been exceptions. I was working in southwestern Saskatchewan when the first case of BSE (Mad Cow) was discovered in the Canadian beef herd. The life’s work of many ranchers was literally crashing down in front of me—millions of dollars was being lost. I had access to people that they wanted/needed information from and it was an honour for me to provide it to them--and to have the opportunity to tell their stories.

Even though I was reporting things that these people often didn’t want to hear, I got the impression that they appreciated the coverage (the effort, anyway).

I get that all the time in sports. That situation was an exception in news, where, most of the time, I experienced indifference.

That’s likely because most of the time I was writing about mill rates.

 

I'm friends with a couple longtime cops reporters and they seem to be jaded in a way that I guess I should have expected...but it was still sort of jarring.

They've adopted some of the dark humor of the cops they cover and don't seem terribly affected by the violence and such.

 

I've seen the same dark humor of our cops reporters and while I understand it, I wouldn't ever want to put myself in a position where I become jaded to that extent...

Jaded about sporting events... I can live with that... I don't ever want to see the say when I'm that unaffected by things like death and murder and crime...

 

I understand the news/sports conflict a lot of reporters have, but what irks me is when some of them label sports reporting is "inconsequential."

That's terribly far from the truth.

Sports might be the best-read section in the entire newspaper. It provides a valuable service in that it offers an escape from day-to-day "reality" -- whatever that might be. Often, it isn't good.

If that isn't enough, you all well know by now that being a sportswriter in the modern age requires some knowledge about business, the legal system, psychology, etc. I'm not sure news-siders need quite that rounded of a skill set.

I don't have the quote in front of me, but I think it was Earl Warren who said when he turned to the news pages, he read about man's failures. When he turned to the sports pages, he read about man's triumphs. Much as I respect the hell out of many of my news-side colleagues (cops in particular), you couldn't pay me enough money to sit through a city council meeting every week. Give me a high school football game any day.

 

I guess when I think of news aspirations, it's not covering city council meetings. It's going to Iraq. Or China. Or spending a few weeks on an enterprise series about a failing inner-city school system and how it can be made better.

That's the kind of news reporting I'm talking about.

 

If I could cover the White House, I would go to news tomorrow... But it doesn't usually work like that, nor should it... You usually have to cover the monotony that is local courts and local government and work your way up, the same way people work their way up in sports...

 

I get it. I guess covering Iraq would be the news-side equivalent of covering the Yankees. Few can do it, and there would be a lot of prep lacrosse matches to cover on the way.

 

I would choose prep lacrosse over Iraq 100 times out of 100...

 

You could write each of those stories using sports as a point of entry. And I'm pretty sure I disagree with Collier.