What are you, as journalists, looking for from a sports info department

Be aware of the newspaper's college coverage schedule.

My paper runs its weekly college roundup on Tuesdays. We need information for that on Monday morning, or even Sunday night.

Also, find out the correct contacts. Some papers have one person who deals with all the college stuff. Others, like mine, break down the athletes by sport -- so pitching me a field hockey story won't be nearly as effective as if you send it to one of my colleagues, who actually covers field hockey. And sending e-mail to the top individual on our masthead, thinking you'll go over the reporter's head, won't do anything but annoy everybody in the department.

Right now, I'd be happy just to get any consistent information from our local colleges. :-\ We used to get multiple faxes each day, and we actually had a daily roundup of the local results. But that stopped more than a year ago, and was replaced by... silence. Well, at least until the postseason is underway and the coach (no, not the SID!) reaches out to ask why we haven't done anything on the team we didn't know was still playing!

 

I was spoiled because early in my career I worked with one of the best SIDs in the country and a few years later I worked with one of the worst.

Here's my story about what the best one did for me once. There was a specific player who all of the beat writers needed and when we were told by that SID that he wasn't coming out, we went back to write our stories and two other beat writers stayed back because they were waiting for a different player to come out. During that time, the player we all needed came out and spoke to the other two beat writers. The SID in question stood there with his recorder and taped the interviews and came back and had an intern transcribe the quotes and gave them to us. His response was, "It wasn't your fault that you missed him. I told you he wasn't coming out, so it's not fair that someone else would get him just because they were lucky and were waiting for someone else."

Considering the magnitude of what this was, he saved my ass and the other beat writer's ass. The other beat writers weren't mad because they recognized what the SID was doing as being "only fair"

 

If you hire interns to help write profiles, game stories or features for your Web site, please edit them prior to slapping up on the Athletics site, or have someone in your office give them an extra read ... especially players' stats in stories.

 

Another small, but nice thing ...

If you are sending an email, put something useful in the subject field:

Podunk men's soccer beats No. 18 Central, 2-1

or

Podunk athlete wins Nobel prize

It helps to get the proper attention. We get thousands of emails. Many I delete without reading, just by looking at who sent them or the subject field.

I really hate it when schools send emails with a vague or blank subject field. And I especially hate it when you click on the email and it just says "See attachment from Podunk U."

I get hundred of emails a day. Yours could get lost if I don't know what I am looking at.

 

Don't have anyone on your staff named Steve McClain.

 

Probably the name we see the most frequently on those "Worst SID" threads.

 

Knowing your media's deadline is a must. The last sports info department I worked with had a few people who were notoriously slow in trying to get us stuff on Saturday night. If it was an away game, I was likely not there because my paper wouldn't cover travel expenses. Finally, after a few times of waiting until deadline for them to get me a story (that I would have to extensively rewrite -- that's another thing. If you write stories, at least try to get your people something that requires little editing before it goes into the paper) I finally started just doing it myself. Sometimes, I had to go to other websites to find stats, a play-by-play, etc. Generally, I would get the stats and have called the coaches and written a better story before they could get me just a bare-bones story.

Also, you have coaches and players at your disposal. Ask them a few questions and throw a quote or two in the story. None of the stories that the department that I dealt with had a quote from any source in there, which was one of the main reasons that I started doing my own stories on away games. It was a smaller school, so I would listen to it on the radio and follow a stat updater and have a better idea of what went on in the game than the SID who was actually in attendance. There were times where I knew more about injuries, recruiting and story ideas involving the players than the SIDs did because I actually talked to the players and developed good relationships with the coaches, who would feed me information discreetly.

 

What do I want from a SID?

I want them to do it the way Georgia does. Period.

 

The bad part is a lot of the crap he pulls isn't because Meyer dictated something or wants access a certain way or with certain restrictions. McClain does a lot of it on his own. Meyer either doesn't care of doesn't want to care.

 

McClain was horrible when he was doing SEC baseball. He was horrible when he was Billy D's SID and Donovan is pretty media friendly.

He's the worst ever.

 

Access is always a big thing for me. If I get a scoop on one of the players but there isn't any sort of designated media availability, please keep in mind that I'd like to still get something ASAP -- a phone call, 10 minutes after practice. Anything. Access, access, access is very important.

Also, please be quick about returning voice mails or e-mails. Sure, journalists call late at night or before you're awake, but please make every effort to get back. If we call at 6 p.m. at night, I think it's fair to expect a response later in the evening. No one goes to bed at 7 p.m. Shoot back a quick e-mail letting the reporter know you're doing something to help. Don't wait until the next morning.

 

The SID (at least in football and hoops) usually has little or no say about access.