Sports journalists are lazy

In the past, when we've done it, especially if we leave voice mail, we get calls from the PR offices saying we can't talk to them without setting it up ahead of time. I don't care about getting scolded. I get scolded by SIDs quite often because I've simply ignored some of their policies (Last year, I went into the stands and watched the game with the mom of CSU's star WR, who was seeing her son play in college for the first time and did a live column off it. Same with the JUCO coach of a player whose parents died three nights earlier; JUCO coach drove 14 hours to be there for his player.) I get told talking to parents isn't allowed, and tell them, "that's out of your jurisdiction."

But the problem arises when we need bigger lifts from PR. There's a new stadium going up at CSU and the school is trying to get into the Big 12. We are talking to the university president almost as often as the AD, and with the president, that's almost always setup through a PR person and when we ruffle feathers by trying to talk to professors without setting it up through PR, they're less inclined to help us -- at least not in a timely fashion -- and that's ridiculous.

I once attended a meeting at the CSU Black/African American Cultural Students just to listen to students discuss Donald Sterling's comments. I didn't need anything from the group's faculty rep, but after he finished small talking with me, he said, "you know you can't use anything I said, right? You have to set that up through the school or else I'm going to get in big trouble." I wasn't interviewing him, so I didn't really care. But still, are employees that scared to talk to the media?

 

That's because I didn't get out my feather.

Good question. It's actually something I'm talking to players about this week following the news of Terence Crutcher. Problem is, for college football (at least all regular season games I've attended), players are in the locker room when the anthem plays.

 

My thoughts:

>>I'm never a fan of journalism hating on journalism without names. It Matt has an example of lazy sportswriters or a "winged" column - it could even be his own - then trot it out. If not, spare readers the sweeping indictment of your own profession. Why make readers even more cynical to the craft? To me, the sweeping generalization is lazy and frankly pollyannish and odd, because it appears to be saying "every day needs to be an enterprise/takeout/novel opinion day." There are going to be down days. There are going to be winged stories, or stories built on mediocre quotes, or a notes section.

Have any of you worked with "the sports section has to rock every day!" guy? I worked with that guy for a brief time. Most editors aren't like that; they're too pragmatic. It's usually a star writer or columnist, and he tends to views the sports/news/arts section as a daily reflection on him - the organization he chooses to work for - which is to say, ugh.

>>Readers care about these mundane details. I'll believe that until I go to the grave. They're human, they know what a prig at their work is like, and some (not all) football coaches are prigs, and that's notable to them. But if they didn't care, the column sure goes out of its way to explain just how wrongheaded the policy -- they don't supposedly care about - happens to be.

>>When it comes to journalism, I tend to critique - most harshly to least harshly - in the following order:

Journalists who turn into filmmakers/TV series creators
Longform writer
Writer of online 2,000-word opinion tomes on opinion tome sites.
Columnist
National person who gets to swoop in with a brand name and get one-on-one interviews the locals don't get
Lead major beat reporter
secondary major beat reporter
lead smaller beat reporter
preps reporter
hybrid desk guy/occasional reporter
photographer/reporter
editor/photographer/reporter

The more time and freedom and story length you get, the less grace I grant you. Frankly, the less grace you should expect.

Beat reporters, I'm not quite so hard on, because I know at least some of that job involved bearing boring witness and kissing some ass. You picked battles. You didn't push the gas pedal every day, and here's the other thing you didn't do: You didn't waste 20 minutes of some player's time asking for their story, then ditching the story because it wasn't quite award-y enough. Takeout guy can do that, because there's some kid over here with cancer who's a better story. Beat guy can't, because he's going to see that player every day for however many years. So when you go in for 15 minutes with a kid, even if it's as boring as unflavored ramen noodles - you eat that ramen and poop out your 15-incher.

Shit yes, you get quotes from the PIO. It's the fucking PIO - that's what they're around to do. And, on occasion, you go up the ladder to get something, or out of chain, or whatever. But you pick those times. You can't maverick daily. Instead, it's a constant negotiation of when and how to push or not.

 

Good point. Now that I think about it, the college games I've been to the players aren't out there during the national anthem. And they don't usually show the anthem on TV.
On the other hand, when all Kaepernick issues and the Tortorella comments came out, I told my family that freedom of speech/expression are rights, but teams are not democracies. The coach is the supreme ruler and what he/she says goes. How would it be if the pitcher says, "Our third baseman sucks and I can say that because of freedom of speech."

 

Years ago I was writing about a local college football player who was preparing for the NFL Draft. I had his number, so I gave him a call. He was no longer on the football team, but still enrolled in school and told me to go through the SID to arrange the interview. Seriously? The SID then told me he doesn't set up football interviews during the offseason. So, yes, it's so ingrained in these kids and faculty members that some will barely say hello without permission.

 

That would have worked.

 

I usually try to at least contact a SID to give them a heads up if I'm writing a story on an athlete.

It's only been an issue one time. State University doesn't give out email addresses for players and coaches to media, so I had to funnel my questions through the SID and he sent me back their answers.

 

Email addresses? Come on, man. This is the age of social media.

Twitter DMs and Facebook messages get you initial contact much faster than email.

 

I don't love absolutes in journalism There are valid points to the "Fuck access, let's do away wit it" approach, but what some people do with access is not what everyone does. Frankly, I think you'd see EVEN MORE lazy "journalism" if you eliminated access. That's how a lot of Champion's League soccer coverage reads. The players are under no expectation to talk, the media has no expectation they will talk, so for the most part they just write what they see. I think it leads to a lot of scathing takes, a lot of opinion that might read like it's fearless, but is also lazy in its own way.

Daily interaction with athletes on your beat sometimes feels mindless. Sometimes it's also about building relationships so that you have their trust when you really need it. The same sports editor in Matt's column who says he wishes colleges wouldn't give access to athletes, I bet he sure as shit wants his reporters to be able to call athletes and convince them to talk when shit hits the fan. The whole "Hey, you've never met me but I cover State University and I'm sorry to get you on your cell phone, but can we talk about three of your teammates being charged with sexual assault this weekend?" conversation doesn't go particularly well in my experience.

When Buster Olney was the Yankees beat writer, he worked the beat better than anyone I've ever seen in sports. And he took the same skills when he became the New York Giants beat writer. His game stories didn't sound the same because they weren't the same. You learned something from every one of them. And he also managed to develop relationships that made him as good as anyone when it comes to big stories. You can be both. The best beat people don't ask for anyone to hand them stories. They zig when others zag. Look at Lee Jenkins on the NBA. Look at Karen Crouse on the Jets and golf. Look at Tim Brown when he was the Lakers or Dodgers beat writer. Or Brian Windhorst when he covered the Cavs/Heat. Molly Knight covering the Dodgers. There are so many examples of people who get way more out of a beat than just taking what a team makes available.

Of course you should call parents. Of course you should visit/call the hometowns of athletes and talk to their teachers, neighbors, cousins, etc. But that doesn't mean there is no value in looking someone in the eye and asking them questions too. Colleges are controlling and paranoid and childish, and if you only want to go to pressers and post-practice gaggles, then yes, you're lazy. But painting sports journalists, in general, as lazy is because some reporters grumble they have to work harder doesn't make all journalists lazy, or even the majority. Nor does it make all access worthless.

Not all lazy journalists are bad journalists. It would be nice if that was true, but it isn't. There are lazy journalists who are ridiculously talented, well connected, and still know how to get around not working that hard. It's maddening, but it's true.

All bad journalists are not lazy. Some are really ambitious and still very bad.

Again, absolutes are silly.

 

Have we asked the question "Are our audiences getting lazy?" as well?

 

Outside of the sake of argument, I don't know if there's any point.

If they don't consume what journalism is offering, through laziness, the desire for a better product or whatever, the result is going to be the same.

 

I'm lazy. Now bring be a beer. I'm thirsty.