Should a Sports Editor write or manage?

A few months ago, we had a local middle school team go undefeated a year after they won only one game. I assigned a photographer to shoot the game for a little photo spread on an inside page. The assignment got trumped for some silly, worthless features assignment (I won't get into all that), and I didn't find out that she couldn't shoot until after the game. So the next day, I go to the school, shoot a team picture and write a little feature for an inside page.

My staff knows I don't cherry-pick assignments. I cover some of the crap they have to cover, too.

 

Depends on the situation.

My predecessor at my previous shop would write big investigative exposés and that was essentially it. My replacement seemingly has limited herself to occasional columns.

Me? I got right in there and covered stuff along with the reporter(s). We had a tiny, tiny operation when the semester wasn't in session. When the semester was in session, we usually had a lot of university students writing copy. That freed me to focus on writing my weekly column and a gamer.

Of course, there was a time when I was running the paper, covering a murder trial and two sports beats. Again, though, the operation was tiny. If it were a larger shop, I'd probably have limited myself to a column.

 

Certainly it is the sports editor's right to decide to do whatever he or she deems best in any given instance, and special circumstances or a particularly large story/sensitive issue may or may not be determined to require the editor's direct handling. (Think Bill Dwyre writing the initial L.A. Times story following the Al Campanis/Ted Koppel "Nightline" interview).

If the Dodgers' PR staff didn't realize before that that interview was going to create a firestorm, they probably did once they saw that Dwyre had come out of nowhere, at a time when he hadn't been writing much, in order to handle that first, breaking story.

But, generally speaking, whether the sports editor reports/writes will depend on the size of the paper and the staff.

At any paper over 20- or 30K circulation, I'd rather have a sports editor be a manager more than a writer, and have him/her get as good at it as possible.

Truly good managers -- of budgets, sections, and especially, people, are hard to come by. And these days, especially, they can be really important -- special, even -- to their papers, their sections and their staffs. Therefore, that should be their focus.

 

also ... it seems like most (though certainly not all) sports editors are not good writers or columnists

 

Yeah, that's an absurd comment.

 

I've had the pleasure of working with some of the finest SE's out there, including one who many on here believe is the best going. None of them wrote, ever, with the exception of one story by one editor because it was Sunday, he didn't want to bother anyone and it popped some big news locally from a non-existent beat.

 

Wow, that's a really dumb fucking statement.

 

um, yeah. there are a few that are no good, sure - but they are, I'd say, in a huge minority. I'd like to think I know my way around a feature/column/whatever, anyway. I know gola's se is a stud, regardless of what he's doing, also.

maybe you should change your name to think then write. just a thought.

 

I was pretty lucky when I worked in sports, but the four sports editors for whom I worked were the best journalists in their departments. The first was a great page designer AND a fabulous writer. The second was a great page designer and pushed reporters very hard to get that something extra into any story. The third was one of the best line editors with whom I've ever worked. And the fourth was a great all-around journalist, very well-versed in FOI and had a great touch with trimming and rewriting stories. Three of the four were very good managers, and the fourth made up for it by being a very good person.

Your mileage may vary, but the word "most" in your statement makes me think you might have drank before you wrote this time.

 

Please do not invert the advice of your username.

 

Seconded. (Thirded. Or whatever number we're up to now.) The guy I mentioned in my first post in this thread? Pulled an APSE Top 5 for a game story last year, and not for the first time.

 

The needs of the department obviously play a big part in where the Sports Editor allocates his time. Having been an SE at a 40K paper, I felt like I was burning the candle at both ends covering college football or basketball, doing 3-4 shifts of desk a week, and trying to manage the department. A lot of that was due to being understaffed, which is almost always the case.
As we hired an ASE, were able to get more correspondents on board, and were operating on full capacity with full-timers, I felt my most productive place was in the office on the design side of things and working with the rest of the writers as much as possible, basically managing the department. Not to say there wasn't time to write, but I didn't feel my time would be best spent covering football or basketball gamers as much.