Rules To Report By

5) Never start sentence with the word "flatulence."

 

I'm very interested to hear why you shouldn't start a sentence with the?

The score thing I couldn't agree more on. Just go with Team x trailed by 15 with under five minutes to go but ended the game on a 20-2 run for an 88-85 win on Saturday.

 

If you are stringing a game, please make sure you know which school your newspaper covers.

One of the most fun Saturdays I've ever had at my last newspaper job was completely recasting a stringer story from a playoff football game. It needed recasting because he interviewed sources from the winning team -- WHICH WAS NOT ANYWHERE NEAR OUR COVERAGE AREA. The stringer claimed the losing team was on the bus and gone five minutes after the game ended, so he talked to the winning team. Bull. Wait for it. Shit. We couldn't find a number for the losing coach, too, so we made it a brief and ran a huge piece of art to fill out the page.

So please, know who you're covering, and maybe introduce yourself to the coach before the game, informing him or her that you need to talk after the game, regardless of the outcome.

 

Wow.

And while you're at it, make sure you take a pen and paper to the game. They will be helpful when trying to take notes, play by play, etc...

 

This was posted on our fair site seven years ago (!). The poster was Old Hack. I never forgot this.

1. Spell

2. Learn to write a 10-inch story.

3. During a three-day trip, submit at least two receipts from Subway and two from Applebee's.

4. Correctly attribute quotes you get off the internet.

5. Try not to plagiarize.

6. Try not to misquote people. If you get accused of this, tell your editor that Mitch Albom, Tom Boswell and Larry Guest do/did it all the time.

7. Accept the fact that Tiger Woods is only going to do the big room.

8. Start with the premise that every college and NFL football coach is a lying sack of crap. They'll hardly ever disappoint you. (I'd add any coach or manager on the college or pro level.)

9. Remember that desk guys are there because they can't write. (I disagree. Strongly.)

10. Sports editors almost always come from the desk. They still can't write. Nod your head a lot when they're butchering your stuff. Take deep breaths. The pain will go away the next day.

11. Make every deadline for about 2-3 years, and you can write your ticket with aforementioned desk guys.

12. If you do miss a deadline, blame it on tech support.

13. SIDs and media relations people are there to make sure you write nothing but positive stuff. It's their job, and don't hold it against them. Pity them, maybe, but it's not personal, it's business. Use some of their notes. Suck up once in awhile. Sometimes, they feed you something worthwhile.

14. You don't have to use every lame, meaningless, cliched quote from empty-headed athletes. Don't fall into the quote-graph, quote-graph, quote-graph trap. You can write it better than they can say it.

15. Never use a quote from an athlete or coach that begins with these five words: "Basically, we just have to ..." If you passed a law prohibiting those five words, 99 percent of athletes and coaches wouldn't know how to begin a sentence.

16. Take enough lessons to break 100 in golf.

17. If you cover the NFL or college football, give news editors advice on the office pool. They'll remember it if they win.

18. Early in your career, volunteer to cover anything. Offer to help on a breaking story ("Yo ... want me to work the phones?"). Offer to make food runs at 9 p.m. It won't hurt.

19. Read three columnists whenever possible: Dan Jenkins, Jim Murray and Bob Verdi.

20. If you ever start a game story with the following sentence: "Last night's game against the Muskogee Mustangs wasn't pretty, but coach John Smith will take it," enroll in bartender school the next day. You just don't have it. (C'mno, we've all done this. At LEAST once. SIU)

 

Good stuff.

 

My rules to live by:

1). Get it right.

(This is the one and only really hard-and-fast rule I have).

2). Never forget that you're a reporter.

(You will miss things, or not think of them, if you do. And, sources should know this about you. If they do, and are OK with it, anyway, you will, eventually build a great reporter/source relationship).

3). Always, always return phone calls/emails, and make yourself predictable that way.

(It's a matter of simple courtesy, people will know what to expect from you, and doing it will make others more likely to do the same thing for you in return).

 

When covering a high school state title game and both teams involved are covered by papers owned by your company, talk to the players and coach that won the state title.

Seriously, we had a guy at the state soccer tournament for three days and the girls state title match story he sent in was all about the team that lost. No quotes from the champion. He said by the time he turned around, the other team and coaches we gone. Which is nearly impossible considering the winning team is awarded its trophy and medals after the losers. Plus, I talked to the coach later, when I had to get quotes, and he said he and the players were on the field for at least 30 minutes after the game.

This is actually a common practice with this bureau’s sports writers. They send over a story with no quotes or the story is all about their team. Doesn’t help much, because we just have to write another story or rewrite theirs.

Anytime I cover a dual market game, I always talk to the opposing coach. Just seems the correct thing to do.

 

The speed at which teams leave high school events now is astounding. I've been locked out of press boxes 10 minutes after the game is over.

You realize how fast that is? You lose two-three minutes, if not more, jumping down the press box steps, sliding across the wet aluminum bleachers, hopping the fence to the football field, dodging the rent-a-cops, and squishing through the mud across the field to get to the locker rooms. You lose another 90 seconds waiting for one team to finish listening to their head coach tell them how well they kicked ass (or got their asses handed to them, you pansies!) and what time practice starts the next day (always the same time).

Then, since you're not allowed into the locker room to talk to players (especially if you're a 21+ male and the locker room is a bunch of 14-18 year old females), you wait outside for the players to come out. Joe Star is always the last one out, and it'd be nice to not use him and talk to Bobby Everybody, but Joe Star scored 4 touchdowns, including the winning one with 1 second left. You have no choice. If you're lucky, you've lost just another 90 seconds before he comes out and says a lot of nothing for 2 minutes.

Grab the coach away from the boosters for 3 minutes - he'll stare you down the entire time - and you run away to the other side of the locker room. Players are on the bus, staring morosely at the back of a 60-year old chain smoking bus driver. Assistant coaches are roaming around, rounding up the few stragglers, but you need the head coach because it was his decision to punt that led to Joe Star's winning touchdown. Meanwhile, the curmudgeon's running the stadium have locked the press box - much to your dismay - and are literally turning the lights off on your operation.

It's awful. It's the worst feeling in the world to have an entire team disappear on you while you're doing your job with another group. But it happens to even good reporters.

 

There's a lot of truth to this, E.M. One thing I try to do before games and during halftime is observe where (what door) teams use to get into and out of the locker room.

When you're covering games at big high schools with multiple gyms and maze-like passages adjacent to those gyms, it can be very easy for coaches and players -- especially from the visiting team -- to sneak out before you talk to them. If it's a school you've never been to, try to get there early and get the lay of the land.

Oh, one other tip ... try to find out a team's record BEFORE you go to the game. You'd be surprised how many coaches, ADs, etc. are stumped by that question.

 

You must work or have worked in some bad areas. I've never seen a team leave the football field that fast. Most of the teams I cover shake hands with the other team, sing the alma mater then huddle up on the field to listen to the coaches post-game talk. Guess we work in different worlds. The worst that could happen is having to walk and talk with a coach after a playoff game when the officials are shooing you off the field to get the next game started.

 

I don't follow any rules.
If a game needs quotes on both sides, I get quotes on both sides. If it doesn't, I don't.
Sometimes I write Jones said; sometimes I write said Jones (but only when it precedes something).
I've gotten phenomenal stories with one source.
If when setting a scene, I mention a partial score before a final score, so be it.