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On why everyone should be a sportswriter for a little while...

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by STLIrish, Apr 23, 2007.

  1. Dale Cooper

    Dale Cooper Member

    Write-Brained,

    Without a comment on the news side, here's my point: There's a lot more to being a sports reporter than writing game stories. Good sports reporters write features that have little to do with anything they've ever seen. They do enterprise pieces that delve into issues that, at their core, have little to do with what happens on the field/court. And they break news.
     
  2. I know all that. The topic was narrative. The guy's point was everyone should write sports/gamers so they can learn narrative.
     
  3. KnuteRockne

    KnuteRockne Member

    The fly in the ointment here is that 99.999 percent of game stories aren't written in narrative style. Or else they'd bore the reader to tears.

    "And then, in the second quarter, Manning found Harrison for a 6-yard gain to the Jacksonville 25. But the play was called back for holding. On the next play, a repeat of third down, Indianapolis tight end Dallas Clark caught a 10-yard throw from Manning down the middle, bringing on Vinatieri for the field goal attempt ..."

    Zzzzz .... zzzzzz .... zzzzzz....
     
  4. kingcreole

    kingcreole Active Member

    Or in our case, having a ME who knows little about sports, never been a sports writer, and constantly harps on us to, essentially, make our section look like a combo of USA Today and Sports Illustrated.
     
  5. crusoes

    crusoes Active Member

    There are hacks on both sides of the room at every paper. Good writing, and reporting, isn't confined to one section. It's the people who go that extra mile who get the good stories.

    That said, after covering a van accident in which four kids were killed (saw no bodies, thank God, profusely), and not sleeping for a week, I resolved never to complain about some of the pettiness I see in sports ever again. I also have a healthy respect for cops reporters who do cover those things, and do a good job at it, and can separate themselves from it.
     
  6. RedCanuck

    RedCanuck Active Member

    You do make a good point there, Cadet. I can go into a meeting or cover an announcement with ease when I'm put in the position. And no, I don't like knocking on the murder victim's door, but I probably could.

    At my shop, whenever I want the simplest game covered, I have to brief the news-side guys for hours about the game, the players, and ultimately "what I want" and this happens every time. I probably take the least vacation days of anyone because there is a degree of specialization and nuance in sports that you don't necessarily find elsewhere.

    That's not a criticism of all news reporters, but I think j-schools should better prepare new reporters in case they have to cover sports. At most small papers, sports is the first specialization, yet many schools don't offer even a class.
     
  7. Cadet

    Cadet Guest

    Last time I took a vacation day I needed the person covering for me to take a softball phoner. I had to make a list of specific questions for her to ask the coach when he called in. Then I had to do basically a "fill in the blank" writeup based on those questions so she could just pop the answers in. I had to leave reminders like "list the higher score, not Hometown High's score, first". This wasn't to get the article written the way I wanted, it was so my coworker could get something on the page without having a breakdown.
     
  8. RedCanuck

    RedCanuck Active Member

    Exactly, more or less the same here.
     
  9. STLIrish

    STLIrish Active Member

    Red, Cadet, it sounds like you work with idiots. Most news-siders are not idiots.
    As someone said above there are hacks (and idiots) all over the place in newsrooms, and you really can't say that news or sports has a monopoly on them. And to be really good on either side takes a lot of work.

    But even though I started this thread about how everyone should be a sportswriter for a little while, I'd like to throw one reason out there why it's easier to do sports: You know the basics almost from birth.
    Most people in this country are exposed to sports from a pretty young age. They play them, they watch them, they talk about them. They know the rules, the history, the strategy, etc. When they become a sportswriter, yeah, they need to develop sources, earn trust, understand the context, etc. And they have deadline pressures news-siders usually don't. But from the get go, they probably understand what they're writing about in a way that few rookies understand, say, the inner workings of state government, or environmental issues, or the world of giant global corporations. Because nobody grows up collecting CEO baseball cards or studying environmental data.
    So when you start a news beat, something beyond "go cover that fire" or "here's a press release, kid," you have to learn an entire vocabulary and history you've never heard before. And you've also got to build trust and work sources and do all the same things a good sports beat writer does. It can be wicked complicated. So, please, don't make us all out to be idiots just because you know one poor newsie who is.
     
  10. I can cover sports because I grew up with sports. But STL, there are a lot of news people who don't know the first thing about them. For some people, news is a lot easier to understand than sports.
     
  11. skippy05

    skippy05 Member

    So have I and I agree. It's also much, much, MUCH more fun. Let's see, I can either watch two amazing basketball teams tear it up for four quarters or I can sit in a council meeting and jab myself in the thigh with a pencil to ease the boredom...yeah, I'm going with hoops...
     
  12. skippy05

    skippy05 Member

    Sounds like my last producing gig in radio. The NASCAR Busch Series race was coming to STL and I booked Martin Truex, who was not only the defending Series champion, but the defending race champion as well. I literally had to write down every single question along with the possible follow-up questions. The host, a TV guy here in STL, almost actively tries to prevent himself from knowing anything about certain sports, including NASCAR. I've also seen the same thing done in PCs. One of the country stations here in town carries the NASCAR races and they sent one of their "talents" to a Dale Jr. PC. She asked pretty good questions and I noticed she was reading them all off a sheet of paper. As she was taking notes, I noticed they weren't in her handwriting.

    But getting back to the topic at hand, I definitely would say it's easier for a sportswriter to move over to news than vice versa...
     
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