SID: "We're not claiming to be journalists."

GW looks goofy for burying it so far down in the story, but this isn't particularly surprising.

I don't bother with softball at the DI school I cover, but I would still get the emails sent to my work account. So every time they'd come in on my phone, I'd see the first sentence, something like "North Bumblefuck pitcher Monica Smith struck out eight batters..." and ignore the rest. About a month into the season, I saw the softball SID and said "Hey, North Bumblefuck's softball team must be doing pretty well."

His response: "Actually, we're 8-14"

It goes on at every school.

 

One thing to consider: In the major leagues, if a guy from the Mariners throws a perfect game, it's on the cover of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. If a guy for the Marlins throws a perfect game, it's on the cover of the Seattle P-I.

Very few people in those markets care about those teams. Still, it's a perfect game.

 

My brother is an SID, at a dreaded D-III no less, and dealing with media is about fifth in his list of things to do.

His school views athletics as a form of alumni relations and a way to market the school to potential students. So he generates content for his website first and, yeah, it is slanted towards his school.

He feels no obligation to write a balanced gamer. If a paper wants a balanced gamer, they should hire him as a freelancer and send a check.

 

I spent more than 10 years in the SID business, and I never would have buried a glaring fact like that. You take the bad with the good, cover it in a comprehensive fashion, and hope some desk guy takes pity on you and runs a brief every other year or so.

 

When I was in college, our football coach insisted that the opposing team never be shown scoring against his team on his coach's show.

So one week, Middle Tennessee loses to Delaware, 70-3 I think.

Yep. They showed the field goal and that was all. Filled the half-hour somehow.

 

The SIDs are smart enough to know who's signing the paychecks, and the bosses don't always want the whole truth out there. That's where the journalists come in.

I didn't assume SIDs to have the same journalistic ethics we have simply because they write releases. These days, SIDs are positions more geared toward marketing/promotions anyway.

 

I got a softball piece from the women's SID one time the girl threw a no-hitter. It was in the next to last paragraph.

And they won.

Her stuff was always written chronologically.

 

And this is where you're horribly wrong.

Media relations departments on a whole couldn't give two shits if their stuff gets "into the paper." They're writing for their own constituency, which is the fans and alumni of the school who come to their sites for recaps.

We're competitors with those websites now. Used to be I'd get a heads up from the school I cover if something big was coming down the pike, just as a courtesy. Not any more. They want news broken from their website, because they want people to read their stories, not the newspaper stories.

We are no longer necessary to them.

Now I'm not saying that the SID staff doesn't still do their jobs in terms of helping to arrange interviews and such. But at Division I schools at least, "getting something into the paper" is far down the list of priorities.

 

If I'm a GW fan and missed the game the first thing I would want someone to tell me about it is "Dude, we got a perfect game thrown against us."

 

Those 10 fans are already at the game or looked at a box.

 

It seems that many college sports information departments are looking for marketing degrees these days over journalism degrees. In the old days, a sports writer could make the jump pretty easily into an SID slot. Not anymore.

 

The funny thing is, I'd bet almost every news organization that got GW's release also got Virginia's release, since Virginia generally sends to most everyone that covers any part of Virginia, including pretty much all of the D.C. metro outlets. Other than the GW paper and radio station, I can't imagine anyone else getting GW but not UVa. So even if they were trying to hide the perfect game, it wouldn't have stayed hidden for very long, if at all.

I went to the GW newspaper to see how they handled it, and apparently the inanity of it all prompted them to do an April Fools issue instead. I miss college.