Kindred stress the needs for gamers

Not for nothing, but half of the college football games on my beat this year start at 7 p.m. Undoubtedly, the stories from the 1 and 3 p.m. games are much, much better sourced.

 

And it's great if you have a college or pro game starting midafternoon. Not for those of us who cover night prep games, or, in my case, someone who needs to do the ol' 10 in 10, then turn around and slap out pages.

Second game of the year, it ran late, I grabbed the coach after handshakes, asked three questions, then was off to the parking lot before the band finished the alma mater. And while kids are more media-savvy than back in our day, finding 10?

I can appreciate your sentiments, and Kindred's thoughts. But like with many ideas hatched in think tanks or by people who have never covered sports or been in my shoes, I see nothing wrong with a reality check.

 

I thought Kindred's piece was great. I really did. The idea of making gamers more like sidebars is perfect.

I only have one thing to add: As a fan, I know I seldom want to read about a game that my favorite team lost.

 

When this sports journalism institute began, I wondered if, with a leadership consisting primarily of former print jockeys, they would attempt to teach and push ideas beyond "Write good leads! Write good gamers! Write compelling stories! Write great turns of phrase! Write! WRITE! WRITE!!!!!!!"

And as I said, it will be very interesting to watch where it goes from these beginnings. To get a proper read, I need to peruse the latest by their broadcasting and New media columnists, which I haven't done yet.

Kindred makes some interesting points. The fact that they are also points that exist in a virtual utopia has already been covered in this thread. The idea of sports gamers as something much more than play-by-play, almost featurized with a boatload of sourcing, has existed for many, many years. None of the ideas he puts forth from D'Alessio's comments are bad. But none of them are new, either. Anyone who has read the big dogs (LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Sports Illustrated . . . maybe USA Today) with any regularity understands that game stories are ideally light on play-by-play and heavy on the ever-elusive perspective.

(will there be a column interviewing a Sporting News editor on how great it is to deliver the magazine's Super Bowl Preview issue to doorsteps a couple of days after the game? OK, sorry, cheap shot. Still have a bad taste in my mouth as a former subscriber)

Anyway, the piece contains ideas many here have championed for a long time, which are widely acknowledged as currently unattainable in most situations. Just like the lessons at Poynter's yearly sports journalism seminars, these are ideas that are easy to put forth in a classroom or other similarly controlled setting, but unfortunately they exist in a vacuum apart from the realities of the business circa 2009. I guess I just regard this piece as the same type of logic that people who made it in past decades still espouse: "Hey man . . . you just gotta work HARDER!!!! True talent rises above! You just gotta want it more!"

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/64631/

I suspect that if some Poynter wag who wasn't "One of US!" wrote such a piece, it would be slagged here. But since DAVE KINDRED wrote it, we're falling all over ourselves to praise it.

And to be fair, since I remember the same Sainted Dave Kindred's attitude on previous threads about the state of the business, I probably read his pleas for better gamers with a jaundiced eye.

I did think his column on the Mark Whicker situation was very good, for what that's worth:

http://sportsjournalism.org/sports-media-news/a-good-columnists-best-friend/

 

Exactly. It's great if you have the time. But when your deadline is 11 p.m. for a 7:30 game, with two heavy passing, spread offense teams, you'll be lucky to have any time for quotes. It's my belief that quotes, particularly college and professional, are not completely necessary because very rarely does the reader actually gain something from them.

I'm on board with the perspective/analysis message. But it these days of earlier deadlines and longer sporting events, the standard model of the perfect gamer has drastically changed.

 

Even when we have an afternoon game time for football, our deadline is four hours after kickoff. So, if you have a long game, forget about it.

 

As I understand it, the early deliveries are driven by the paperboys, for lack of a better word. They want/need to be done with delivery early enough to get to their next jobs.

 

Not reading through this whole thread, but has anyone mentioned that part of the problem with getting well-sourced, analytical game stories is that those types of reads don't come from thin air. To pull those off, you have to be a good writer. To be a good writer, you need some direction and teaching. In the newsrooms I've been in over the years, most editors have been unwilling to work with writers. On the flip side of that is having writers who are open to constructive criticism. That's something I also think is in short supply. Totally unrelated, I was just thinking last night how odd it is that many of the writers I see today, especially younger ones, are rarely in the office, and when they are, they file their story and leave. You're not going to learn a damn thing like that.

 

Even with the significant time and space constraints many of us now face, the goal can and should always be to write something unique, an angle that the readers cannot get anywhere else. We have behind-the-scenes access and institutional memory, we have to use it to our advantage. It's the only way to keep us relevant.

 

Not as much as we used to, Kid...

 

Um, it has more to do with your readers having to get to their jobs. Deliver the paper at 8 am, and many of them will either be on their way to work or on their way out the door, in which case you might as well not even bother.

 

No disrespect to all the naysayers ...
I did sports for 10 years (and still do prep football) - I'm no where close to Kindred, Heinz or Jenkins' caliber - but I can churn out an 15-inch, Friday night game story that's more analytical and inside the numbrs driven than play-by-play.
And I can do it with quotes - not from 10 people, but maybe three to four.
And get it done - having sent pictures to office at the half and kept running stats the whole time - before deadline.


Nitpick it all you want, but the basic premise of Kindred's column - which I think is this: Play by Play Game Stories have no place in today's paper - is spot fucking on.
Rather than pick the argument apart, I can look at his points and take from it the positive aspects that apply to me and my situation.

Rant over. Carry on.


Edit: I'm not bragging. I'm a nobody. A regular, small-time daily writer at a poduck paper whose covered prep and college games big and small.