USA Today's Chris Chase: Post-game interviews worthless

If Chase is right, why do so many editors and reporters bother?

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/usat-attention-all-sports-assignment.html

Jim

 

He clearly was talking about one-on-one TV interviews. No one ever says anything interesting in those.

 

For the typical reporter . . .

If you're going down there "because I have some questions I'd like answers to," then it likely will be useful.

If you're going down there "to get some quotes," then it may be useful but likely won't be.

 

Really the only purpose of them is to show whether the losing side is a good sport or not. It's like the consolation speeches on election night.

 

Agree with Versatile. The thread title and the OP badly misconstrue what the writer said.

 

Why would one-on-one TV interviews be less productive than those with print?

 

Because those TV interviewers ask worthless questions.

I would add that just about every Bill Belichick interview in the past decade has been worthless because the man lies through his teeth at every chance.

 

What Vers said.

Also a one-on-one print interview that is pre-planned to take approximately one minute and consist of three general questions would be similarly worthless. That's why they aren't scheduled and don't occur.

 

Jesus. That blog was a hot mess.

As for postgame being worthless, it just depends on who's doing the questioning. I don't find it worthless at all. If you're worth a damn as a beat writer, you figure out how to make a postgame presser worth your while. You tailor your questions a certain way, you read the coach and player's personalities to get them to open up. In other words, instincts good reporters should have.

I think a better question is why there's some in our industry who are so self-loathing to think that part of the process of our job is worthless? I do think he's primarily talking about TV postgame interviews in his blog, but there are those out there who think access in general is overrated.

Of course, those same people rarely have a better option to bring to the table. And when you ask them how you replace the access with something equally productive, they generally clam up, because, like so many other things in life, they want to criticize something without having a proper solution/replacement for it.

 

Bubbler, I think you're taking it the way gannettblog wants us to take it, making his favorite target look bad, rather than the way the writer intended it.

 

You're blowing my mind.

 

Probably for the same reason so many of them send large contingents to media day at the Super Bowl: They're lemmings.