OK to use media days pool quotes later?

In my current non-journo job I am sometimes interviewed by the press, and I had a writer recently do a cut and paste job on a story that I was involved with. I cannot tell you how much it pissed me off. The writer used a quote from a boss of mine from three weeks prior and spliced it into a story she did after an interview with me.

Quotes expire over time. If you use a quote from media day where a coach says his team has a great run defense and in week five they are getting shredded for 250 a week, I sure as shit would not use the media day quote without a lot of contextual shit prepping the reader. In fact, if you did use it, background or not, you might burn a source for a long time.

 

If the OP's paper is using month-old quotes for pre-season features, why are they writing them in the first place. If you couldn't go to the media event in person, or run AP copy, it seems silly to run the quotes now.

 

Well, it's sort of a hypothetical situation. But I imagine it would come up if you were trying to do a series of SEC stories on each team, and it was difficult to nail down one-on-one interviews with every SEC coach post-media day but preseason. If you're not a paper that normally deals with the school, I could see some media relations people saying, "I'll do what I can, but this is why we do media days. Coach is in the middle of two-a-days now." If you just need to interview one coach, it's probably doable. If you're trying to interview 11 or 12, it might be challenging.

 

I disagree. What if you did a feature interview on, OK, not the quarterback, but some player of interest and the week of the game wanted to run it? In this day and age of impossible access why can't you run it and not put a time element on it? It's a new era now. Some Internet only site like rivals.com or whatever.com would do it, why can't we????
For gosh sakes, this is an industry getting rid of copy editors. This is an industry competing with bloggers who make shit up. Why can't we do the same things the sports websites are doing? You did the interview. The feature holds up the week of the Purdue-Illinois game. Why can't you run it? These old rules of journalism seem pretty ridiculous now. Newspapers are on their last, dying legs and we are worried about making sure the reader knows FEATURE quotes were gathered 2 months earlier at Media Days? Why?

I'm not saying I'd do it. But if the quotes hold up and your organization paid you to attend the Media Days why can't they get maximum output out of said reporter?

 

I guess if you asked questions, for example, about a player's childhood for a later feature or how that player was recruited, that could be used. That is not going to change over time.

But if you are asking a player's opinion on something, like what game he looks forward to the most on the schedule, that should be lost after a week or so.

And Fred, the general reader is not going to continue to visit bloggers that are wrong or make shit up. I have a feeling in five years, a writer like Buster Olney will have millions of readers each day. People will gravitate to the best, and since it is just as easy to click Buster as it is pittpanterrocks.com, I think the major guys will win out.

I still feel you will have the need for one major online news source per metro region or town region. Someone still needs to do obits.

 

You have to put a time element on quotes. It's presumed if you don't indicate when that the quote is very recently. I see a lot of recycled quotes in November from preseason interviews. You're not being accurate if you don't mention that the quote came in August. Yes, it takes away from your story slightly.

 

If a writer is basing part of a story on three-month old quotes, that's another problem.

 

In any circumstance other than me going to said team's facility and talking to the subject, I like to provide the where and when the quote was said for context. "We like our team," Saban said July 27 at SEC Media Days in Birmingham. "We don't like our team anymore," Saban said on the SEC's weekly teleconference Tuesday.

 

What if you did this? If you have to indicate in your feature story that you obtained the quotes at Media Days, then you should instead have just sat on your ass at Media Days, done the basic story and sidebar, and not bothered to do any feature interview to be used during the season.

Newspapers cry about budgets. If a hard working reporter is not allowed to interview athletes from other teams to run during the season without ruining the story by saying, "he said at Media Days two months ago," then something is wrong. I guess many editors would just rather have the reporter sit on his behind at Media Days because the odds of getting a good interview the week of the game for many outlets are not good in this day and age of lack of reasonable access.

In my scenario the reporter is not trying to fool anybody. He did the feature interview. He just saved it for 2 months to be used when the team he covers plays the other team. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying it is a waste of resources to not allow this. The feature is ruined if you add that the player said it at media days.

 

Amazing that this is even a debate.

Pretty sure a feature story will not be "ruined" by using an old quote and saying so.

 

Since when is there news at a media day press conference?

 

Yeah, really.