How to (not?) cover the NCAA tournament

amazing they could/did not pay $150 or $200 to a stringer to put together a notes package and a gamer ...

 

That's my question, too.

 

No excuses. This is the NCAA tournament, for Christ's sake. One of the single biggest sporting events of the season, one that draws millions of eyes to TV sets. The Waterloo Courier sent a reporter to cover that regional where Northern Iowa upset Kansas, and its circ is probably a fifth of this unnamed paper.

And people wonder why more and more readers are going online.

 

I cannot believe anyone would seriously shrug this off.

When a reader reads a byline story, that reader assumes the paper was on site to cover the event, unless otherwise told. To put it mildly, this was misleading. I'd be comfortable saying it's out and out lying.

You want to do it this way? Fine. But tell the reader what you did. Full disclosure.

 

This is only the beginning. The next generation of writers, who come into this game knowing only the belt-tightening era of survival in newspapers, will not think providing coverage this way is strange at all. Ten years from now, a string like this would not exist.
With a televised event, and ASAP press conference transcripts available almost immediately online, the temptation is obvious for sports editors.
I wouldn't say that sports organizations intended this as a consequence, but as they make it easier to provide print coverage (advertising for their products) without the journalists actually being at the event, there is less room needed for the press, more room for the paying public, fewer ham sandwiches to buy. Win, win, win.

 

Ok. I am assuming that the stories, notebooks, etc. carried bylines and no datelines and that the information was obtained via TV coverage, stats and quote sheets.

1. Any wire stories or notes or quotes that were used should have been clearly labeled in the story, in a shared byline or a tagline at the bottom.

2. It's dishonest to present the package that way as if you are the source of information because you are completely reliant on what is shown or given to you. If there were a controversy, an argument after the game, a suspended player, you don't have any context to include that in the story.

3. It's a bad precedent. You want newspapers to be in the habit of saving $1,000 so they cover NCAA tournaments via the TV and internet?

I can see a paper tempted to do this if it's a surprise, but I'd rather pay a freelancer or go with wires than manufacture something at the office.

If you can't see any problems with this at all, you might as well be writing for Bleacher Report.

 

how is this an example of why people are going online?

 

In short, it appears this shop felt the omission of a dateline covered its ass. I have a serious problem with the lack of attribution.

 

In short, you believe that readers deeply care about things that only someone with an inside perspective on the industry would care about.

 

One thing readers care about is whether you send a reporter to cover a game or not.

Many readers assume that if we had a 2-inch writeup on a high school softball game from Tuesday night, we had a reporter there. And if you tell them it was from the coach calling or whatever, they think that is something less than ideal.

 

That's just restating the argument. It's not a reason why it should be done, it's just saying it should be done.

That's a reason why it's a crappy way to cover the game. Not why it's unethical.

Another good reason why this sort of coverage sucks, but not a reason why it's dishonest to readers.

 

Jay,

I agree with you 100 percent that this is misleading, but I don't think the readers notice or care. I constantly see readers ripping on their "local rag" for not doing its job when its an AP stories from 1,000 miles away. In the pre-net days, I remember getting calls from people complaing about stories the paper "wrote" that were AP filler pieces in the back of the B section. One of my all-time faves was my desk mate getting a nasty letter written to him for covering a hair band reunion concert in our city from the night before when he could have covered Neil Young...who was in Europe and our paper mentioned in the lifestyle section.