Questions at press conferences

I have to (or get to) ask about 80 percent of the questions at the news conferences for the teams I cover. I ask basic questions with others around, but I pull the players or coaches aside for anything I don't want others to have. No big deal.

 

This is nothing new. I've been through the same thing before with the TV folk showing up without a clue and just piggy-backing off what I've asked. While it's annoying as hell, there are a couple of ways to look at it. Take solace in flipping on the evening news and seeing the response to your question with the coach looking in your direction, not the cameras. Chances are you asked a better question than any of the fluff bs the TV guys threw out there. Also, it shows you know what's going on. In my case, the SID realized that, and he would go out of his way to make sure I was in the loop on certain things and give me access to the coach not made to the TV people.

 

Read headbutt's 3 posts. Then read them again and again and again.

Then, get over your pompous ass self

 

While he's made only 33 posts, JackInTheBox's point is clear. He's doing the work for the rest of the room and not getting many useful answers from the questions the rest of the room asks (if any) in return. It happens a lot in one-paper towns, especially those with clueless electronic media and fanboys in the same room.
Again, the way to go about it is let the rest of the crowd ask those questions, then get the useful answers privately. There is always a way to get the better angle.

 

I understand what you're saying, Jack. I've been in similar situations. The bottom line is, they have every right to piggyback off your questions in a press conference. Nothing you can do about that. Can you get the quotes you need by getting one-on-ones? If you're on the beat, you ought to be able to get people on the phone or pull them aside for private interviews. I would do that and keep my press conference questions to a minimum. Otherwise, you're just going to have to live with the way things are.

 

I get sick of other reporters or TV people leeching off my questions. If they want to use them, let them get their rocks off by leeching off your work. You know what you have asked and you know that you know the information that you do. Take pride in asking those questions and if they can't ask them or don't ask any questions, who looks superior in front of the coach or the rest of the media?

 

I am with the folks who think you do your job and not worry.

It's not going to affect the vast majority of your readers.

I think you are taking this too personally.

My opinion.

 

Well, you could start identifying yourself and your paper each time. At least you'd get a plug in then.

 

I sat in on a presser with Rosie Perez once. The writer from the local IDed herself as (whatever her name was) from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "the state newspaper." Now that was pretentious.

 

So is it your questions, or your questions and the other guy's questions?

Since you're smarter than everyone else in asking questions, why not just stay quiet? No one else will be able to get any information at all because they're too dumb to ask anything decent. And then you can just take the answers to the other people's questions and use them in your stories -- that'll show 'em!!

 

But if you can get the coach off to the side, it's a good strategy. Just clam up.

 

I do that when possible, but sometimes it's not. Meanwhile, the coach's comments, stemming directly from my questions, are already being published and discussed on fan sites or the evening TV news the night before my paper hits the streets.

Not sure how my frustration with that makes me "prententious" or a "pompous ass."