The relevance of the classic game story

Great gamers still have a place. He's been gone from the paper now for awhile, but Tim Brown's Laker game stories in the LA Times were incredibly good. And Bresnahan's are also superb. Reading them, I definitely get something out of them, even if I've watched the game.

 

I say game stories still have their place. Just stay away from play-by-play and hit the high points. Use the most relevant quotes and just remember quotes are a mix, not a staple, and you'll be OK.

 

Interesting discussion as always on this topic, one I've struggled with in 8 years as a sports editor. We want to do things differently, and each year we try new wrinkles, but biggest issue we all face at daily newspapers is deadlines. Ours are the worst they've ever been, which often makes gamers a nightmare for our college and high school writers.

Here's a gamer from our paper today from the high school state basketball tournament. It was a day game and the writer had some time. There's some good quotes from both coaches in here. We need more of these kind of gamers...

http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20100304/SPORTS0609/3040345/1346/Sky-s-the-limit

 

This ... http://sportsjournalism.org/sports-media-news/a-plea-for-a-fading-form/

 

I've been through the many cousins of this thread, and it always gets me wondering: How can we avoid straight gamers every day? We cover sporting events, and for a minimum of 300 days a year, those sporting events will not include feature-worthy material. They will be games. Many will be boring and pointless, as will their corresponding stories in the daily rag. Someone will win, someone will lose and you're there to tell people how things happened, what effects it has and what it was like to be in the game via player/coach insight. That's why people began reading sports sections in the first place.

I can see where IJAG's paper can do better by focusing their writers on the stuff that's not in AP's straight gamer. That may be the way to go. And the dozen or so mega-markets in America may be a different scenario. But to assume that readers have already seen the game and gotten all the information they desire from TV, bloggers and wire services is to assume our own irrelevance.

So why even print? If there's a big game in town, just make the front page in Futura bold, 240 points:

Well,
You Saw
The Game
Already:
How Was It?​

 

You lose the games and you lose the essential drama that draws fans to sports in the first place. Conflict/resolution are essential to any good storytelling. And in sports, unlike in much of life, there usually is a resolution that satisfies the readers' emotions even when the outcome is unfavorable.

Now there is a difference between the rote recitation of facts and vivid accounts that put the reader on the field, in the dugout/bench, in the locker room and inside the heads of those who participated.

That's one thing that people like TBL forget. There is a niche for the off-the-field outsiderish pissiness they publish, but it is only a niche and not a business plan for those engaged in mass communications. The vast majority of sports fans wants to be transported someplace they can't quite go without assistance, even if they already know the outcome and even if they had front-row seats. That's something only an experienced beat writer, an eyewitness columnist, a skilled photog and tuned-in page designers and headline writers are apt to give them. The AP gamer on ESPN.com is unlikey to convey this.

 

The traditional gamer is still vital to online coverage, and really the Internet's presence can make the traditional gamer as relevant now as in newspapers' Golden Age. Get a good gamer up quickly after the final horn, and voila - in depth, in person coverage that Sportscenter can't touch with its two highlights while making room for 20 minutes of Night at the Improv.

But when it comes to the next day coverage of a game, I'm keen on features and angles from the game than the game itself. More WHY than WHAT. But the WHAT still has an important place, I feel that place is the Web.

 

I worked for years at a paper with tons of space and lots of pages and a tendency toward long gamers. Now, I work for a weekly with a Web site, where I blog the games in detail and pick a game (or 2) of the week to highlight in the print publication.

Our first try with this approach came out this week. Those of a certain age will know the inspiration for what's anchoring the two pages of the double-truck.

<a href="http://www.tigerrag.com/wp-content/uploads/lsu-10-william-mary-92.pdf">Example</a>

 

Maybe it's just me, but I enjoy ESPN's recaps with the score, the player of the game and the "the game was over when:"
Agree there is a place for a great gamer, but it usually requires a great game to make it so.

 

More and more, the relevance of the game story depends largely on the relevance of the particular game.

Greater selectivity and more worthiness on the part of the games is needed these days for most people to be truly interested in them. And, given that, the stories still need to be well reported and executed by the writer in order to catch and keep the attention of readers.

 

Exactly. TBL isn't arguing print v web, it's arguing that sports fans don't care about the actual game. Which says more about TBL than it does about the fans.

Win, schpin, whatever, who was the chick waiting in the player's parking lot after the game?

 

And this is why I feel for all its shouting from the rooftops of the old sports media guard's demise, sites like The Big Lead and Deadspin are actually further out of touch. Yes, they get 100K hits or whatever the number is and have their ravenous peanut gallery of goony commenters, but I guarantee the amount of folks reading outdated Lakers gamers in the LA Times far exceeds the readers of "KU coach gives porn star tickets."