Sports Journalism Course

At my school, sportswriting is an elective class that they can take after they've taken several writing classes and one or two editing classes. So they've learned the nuts and bolts of reporting and writing. Knowing how to keep stats is part of being a sportswriter, and that's what they're in this class to learn.

 

It's just not that hard. And you'd have to do it differently for every sport. And what if the kid, but I have this iPad app that does it for me?

I think it's like having a course in medical school that teaches you have to format the invoices you send to the insurance company.

You need to learn how to write and report. that's most important.

If you're hiring someone and you have two candidates and one is a good writer and reporter and the other is not so good, but is a whiz at keeping HS football stats, which one do you want?

 

I would think a sports journalism program would be within the overall journalism program, not a separate degree. I agree with what most have said here, especially the part about learning to ask questions.

There's far more to journalism than just reporting scores.

 

Teach them how to find people who don't want to be found/contacted -- teach them what people in major-metro newsroom libraries do in terms of using computerized databases and search programs, so that they can go and do it themselves.

Teach them how to make their way around a police department -- the absolutely critical importance of having case numbers, seeking out, making friends with and using watch commanders, and knowing how to deal with police PIO reps in effective ways.

Teach them about the Freedom of Information Act, and when and how to use it, and how to enforce it.

Teach them everything you can about producing, formatting and posting good video, TV and Web material.

Then deal with sports.

 

You may as well just call me in for a guest lecture then.

 

If he did, he'd get his money's worth and more. There's nobody I can think of I'd call first for something like that. More and more, reporters need to be equipped as researchers, especially with research departments largely a thing of the past at even the largest news organizations -- and time to spend on a story growing shorter and shorter because of budget constraints.

Give me a hungry staff and Jack managing the troops and I like my chances making such a place roar.

 

Sports should have a pre-req of a basic journo and investigative reporting classes, so you can get your basics out of the way. The video stuff should be covered there too.

Whoever said covering a game on a deadline situation is a great idea.

So is learning how to keep stats. Just the basics should be fine.

Hell even an, ahem, role-playing class on how to deal with angry coaches would be a good idea. Say a coach after a loss, or a coach who just saw a column that ripped his team apart.

 

Like I said above, they've already had several writing classes and an editing class or two before they're even eligible to take my sportswriting class. They know how to write; they know how to report. I'm teaching 'em how to cover sports. Part of the class is how to keep stats. It's no different from our public affairs reporting teacher telling them how to read a cop report or file an FOI request. If I'm hiring and have two guys who can write reasonably well and one is ready to go cover junior league baseball tomorrow and one needs to be told how to keep stats for a baseball game, guess which one I'm hiring.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think there are enough sports-specific things to teach that they woudn't have learned in a basic reporting and editing classes that it's silly to waste time on something that anyone who has an interest in sports ought to a) know already or b) be able to figure out for himself.

I predict that zero people on this board ever had any formal lessons on how to take stats, but we all figured it out without giving it a second thought.

If I hired a guy who had no clue had to do it, I'd spend 10 minutes showing him my system, tell him to go watch a game on TV and practice and check his stats against the official ones. Class dismissed.

It's not brain surgery.

 

Have them cover live sporting events ... see if the SID will let them group-cover a minor sport event such as a soccer or lacrosse game, give them the feel of trying to get stories out of the event, how to handle a gang-bang interview, et al. The coaches in those sports are usually happy to have attention and are generally pretty cooperative.

I've seen a group at a similar class at IUPUI do such a deal at a minor-league hockey game -- the instructor arranges it with the team. The team goes out of its way to accommodate the students, and it's pretty funny to see 20 college students cornering the coach in his office after a game.

Also, NEWS training is important. Many students have the misconception that sportswriting is about covering games. That is becoming a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. Many prep/college writers spend their time on recruiting -- to the point where major metros are starting to staff summer AAU tournaments to get scoops/contacts on recruiting (excuse me while I toss my cookies). If you're a pro writer, you're going to have to be able to keep tabs on pending trades, free-agent deals, locker-room politics, who's lying about injuries.

Wall-to-wall coverage is important. Send your class out on assignments with Flip cameras and tell them they need to video their interview. Teach them to blog before and during a game, in addition to writing a gamer. As a Bruins fan, I check the Globe's blog before every game to see the line combos. Teach them to find stories at practice, to develop sources among the players, coaches and front-office personnel. That is just as important as being able to keep stats and write a decent "news story" about a game.

Another thing I'm discovering -- as an incoming high school journalism teacher -- is that sports journalism isn't really taught at a lot of high schools, so a lot of students fall into the rut of just picking random games to cover.
Teach news judgment. For a preps writer, which games/events are important to cover with your limited staff? When I was a small-town SE, we had a pecking order, but it came with judgment. Ours was to staff all football/boys basketball games, and with all other sports, to staff intra-county games (where we could hit 1/2 our reader base at once), games with key conference race implications, games between two ranked teams, and all state tournament events. Teach them how to write a gamer so it looks forward, rather than backward ... and how to see the "big picture."

 

Since when is it necessary to have a college course to learn how to keep stats? I learned how to keep score in baseball with my dad watching Dodger games as a kid. Keeping stats isn't that difficult.
There are so many other things a reporter needs to learn, like interviewing and writing on deadline. I'm in the camp that would require every reporter, news, biz, features or otherwise, to spend a season covering high school football just to learn how to write a story on a tight deadline. It would benefit all reporters.

 

Writing on deadline is one of the tops for me, as is working a beat and developing sources. And I wouldn't budge about deadlines. No late assignments allowed, or SERIOUSLY dock them if you do allow them to turn anything in late.

Also, there's plenty of style-specific stuff for sports you may want to spend some time on it (RBI vs. RBIs, for instance). You may also want to work on developing good enterprise ideas, and how to turn those ideas into quality stories, and you'll definitely want to address online aspects, from video to blogs to interacting with readers through Twitter and Facebook and other social media.

I wouldn't be merciful in grading either. I wasn't a journalism major, but some of the best learning experiences I ever had were because of Berry Tramel, current Oklahoman sports columnist and former sports editor. Berry used to come to OU once a week, or close to it, and he would take a week worth of the school paper, or several days, and he would just tear into it with a red pen, marking up wordiness, things we didn't include and should have, poor writing, and pretty much everything else. You'd have what you though was an amazing story, and the thing was bleeding when Berry was done with it. Some of the writers took it personally, but I learned a TON in those sessions. Some of your students may think you're being hard if you grade hard, but in the long run, they'll thank you.