1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Preferred Beats

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Xodus, Apr 1, 2008.

  1. awriter

    awriter Active Member

    If you're coming out of college, chances are a major league or big college beat isn't in your immediate future. You will most likely wind up covering high schools or small colleges for a few years. And if you get a chance for a pro or major college beat, take it. Don't worry about whether it's baseball or basketball or football. Those jobs are like gold; don't pass one up.
     
  2. Stone Cane

    Stone Cane Member

    another great thing about the NFL beat - in addition to the points made above (manageable travel, good hours, league-mandated access) - is that you don't get stuck in this rut of a daily game story, some notes and not much else

    covering NFL, you can actually stretch out (as much as papers let you do that these days) and do some writing for Tuesday through Sunday

    i'll add this -- many of the good pro beat guys in my market started out covering preps, took it seriously, worked our asses off, didn't complain and worked our way up to a beat.

    if you're lucky enough to get a job at a daily out of college, approach whatever assignments you get with the same work ethic that you'd approach covering the NBA or NFL. if you don't, you'll likely never get the pro beat you're hoping for
     
  3. Miles O'Toole

    Miles O'Toole Member

    I'll be another to echo the NFL beat. Your life is scheduled for about half the year with no media access on Tuesday and Saturday. Makes life easy to schedule. Of course there are headaches as I've realized during my 2+ years on my NFL beat, but the grind of NBA and MLB coverage is enough for someone to drop dead from exhaustion.
     
  4. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    PGA Tour. That was my dream full-time beat when I first got into the biz and I tried to work toward that as much as I could, covering a few tourneys a year and writing golf stuff whenever possible. What I loved about covering golf is that for a few minutes you could just appreciate how good those guys are, like watching Tiger on the tee or walking one hole or whatever. I'm a golf (playing) fanatic so that added to the allure for me.

    Alas, golf beat jobs seemingly open up about once a decade. I thought I might be able to hang on at one paper long enough to outlast the golf writer, but I ended up moving on. And the paper ended up doing away with the golf beat anyway.
     
  5. Xodus

    Xodus Member

    Thanks. I generally keep running play-by-play of a game anyway because it's easier for me to remember the specifics of a play if I wrote itdown.
     
  6. Some Guy

    Some Guy Active Member

    You need to learn to keep your own football stats, too. If you cover high schools, nobody is going to be there to hand you a box score when the game is over.

    I had no idea how to do it until my first job. Luckily, my SE gave me a couple of stat sheets and a crash course right before I left to cover my first game.
     
  7. Hank_Scorpio

    Hank_Scorpio Active Member

    We've covered the stats things in a couple threads before and those had very good hints.

    I think the main thing is to do as much as you feel you are comfortable keeping track of accurately.

    This one is more of a football stats thread:
    http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/46555/

    And this is more for basketball
    http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/49780/
     
  8. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    I've heard that from a lot of people, but I've always felt baseball players are the most accessibile and easiest to deal with because most of them eat at least some humble pie coming up thru the chain. Just about everyone has to eat PBJ sandwiches during a 12-hour bus ride and just about everyone has to come to grips with the fact he's no longer the BMOC at low-A ball.

    Some of them are already dicks and some turn into dicks once they get to the bigs--it's still disappointing to have to chase down a guy who was accessible and easygoing when he was at Double-A--but they're still far easier to deal with than the football players who have been treated as Gods AND had a sense of paranoia instilled into them since they were 14.

    Plus I think baseball players respect those whom they see on the road. It's a grind for them too, in a different way, and I think they appreciate those who travel, even if they have no idea the hoops writers have to jump thru to go from point A to point B.
     
  9. Rosie

    Rosie Active Member

    A couple years ago, we went to a Wild game.

    Halfway through the first period, Mr. Rosie turned to me and said, "Rosie, you're not working. Put the damn camera away and enjoy the game."

    Moddy has a very valid point. I found myself going to games 'as a fan' and not even cheering. Pre-sports writing, I would lose my voice at a Vikings game.

    Now that I'm news, I found myself actually cheering at the recent NCAA women's hockey tourney.

    A step in the right direction for a recovering sports writer. ;)

    As far as preferred beat, start with what you can get and work from there. And be open to learning.
     
  10. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Well no shit... Good luck finding that gig though... :)
     
  11. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    During my career I've covered MLB, NBA, college football and basketball (combined beat) and the NFL.

    The NFL is a cakewalk compared to the others.
     
  12. Boobie Miles

    Boobie Miles Active Member

    I agree with that 100%. I can't imagine the rigors of a beat if you didn't enjoy the sport. I think it's almost impossible to remain a fan of a team you cover anyways.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page