NY Daily News writer takes a different approach with his Mets lead

You think there should be MORE opinion in stories?
Do you work for Fox News?

I agree straight gamers should be out, but this? ... no.
Opinion blurs the line between fact, news and opinion and bias. Gamers should, can be more of a feature. It can be done without interjecting the writer's opinion.

I realize the rules are more relaxed with sports, but what if you tried crap with a political story, say the State of Union or the Governor's State of the State?

 

I feel like I have a fresh victim, but I don't want to belabor it.

First, as I have been saying since (as noted) the early 1980s, sports is NOT the State of the Union or the Governor's State of the State. It's sports. It's more on the entertainment/movie review side of the newsroom than the city desk/straight news story side.

I know too much has happened to say that if we had more opinionated game stories for the past 30 years, we might not be in this mess. Clearly, too much else has occurred.

But my bottom line has always been this: Good beat writers should have been saying what and WHY things happened in game stories, and they shouldn't have had to rely on supporting quotes or whatever to do so, which is the standard argument.

If your beat writer is your expert, he should bring that expertise to bear in game stories -- and that includes strong opinion. I think that's what readers want -- contrary to conventional wisdom -- and that's what you pay him or her for.

Finally, none of this means that there aren't places for extremely straight and objective reporting in the sports section.

Game stories aren't one of those places.

 

Expert equals expertise, not opinion. There are many interesting ways to do a game story that aren't a gimcrack gimmick.

 

Well, Dooley, I've been on a different side of this argument with people for 30 years, so ...

 

Well said.

Further, news stories could benefit from some of this (minus the snark). Objective writing doesn't mean giving two sides equal weight. Rather, one should fairly analyze the issue. If one side is clearly wrong, there's nothing wrong with a "fair" and "objective" journalist from saying so.

 

Well, I can make the case that newspapers in general should have been doing this all along, politics or covering the city council or tax rates or anything, but I didn't want to muddy the waters.

 

WE. ARE. ROBOTS. LET'S. MAKE. THIS. AS. BORING. YET. ACCURATE. AS. POSSIBLE. NO. OPINION. PLEASE.

RINSE. REPEAT.

Sound about right?

 

Ah, the old argument absurdim, tried at least twice. Because, of course, there's no middle ground.

 

No. There is. It's where the lede in question falls.

 

I was just reading Richard Deitsch's media power rankings and he was complaining how sports was once aginn shut out of the Pulitzers. With SF_Express' reasoning it's no wonder.

Opinions of expert beat writers should not be in stories. Period. Ever. That's what a column is for.
Opinions slant the story and that can affect what you do down the road. Consider the "homers" in the radio and broadcast booth.

The beat writer who pisses all over the team because they suck or a player... how can fans expect them to report objectively on a news/sports scandal story that affects the team?

I respect your opinion, but I think there is NO place for this kind of stuff in a game story. Too much room for trouble.

 

I wrote something about this a couple of years ago. This column by Jack Shafer was one of the baselines for my argument:

http://www.slate.com/id/2214969/

 

Yeah, "blah blah blah" is the height of middle of the road prose. Unless we think newspapers should be written for the postironic hipster.