Which March Madness game story is the best-written? Judge for yourself.

Brent kicks ass. End of thread.

 

As others have noted, it's tough to make this call w/out knowing the deadlines. And for those of us who've covered those games, even a few minutes makes a big difference.

I like the DMN lede the best of the lot, but...

How in the world can you not quote the kid who hit the free throws? Give me something, anything, even if from the dreaded quote sheet.

Again, tough to critique without knowing time constraints.

To be honest, as a fan of college hoops, I prefer the vehicle the NYT used to set the scene.

 

One thing this exercise points out is that there's a huge difference between writing a game story about a winning team and a game story about a losing team. The "winning" stories don't reflect quite as much emotion -- the winning team plays on, after all.

NCAA stories have to be judged slightly different than other game stories. There are usually a lot of them, even in wire roundups, in any newspaper, so the stories tend to be shorter and have to cover a lot of ground quickly. That's why I liked Rachel Cohen's story.

I didn't like the top of the San Antonio story because I didn't think it did what I think a game story is supposed to do -- reflect on what happened in the game. Too much back story. That said, the story also was sprinkled with plenty of details, which I always like to read.

 

memphis: we're talking 42 words, 5 commas in the opening sentence and 8 journalists who think it's the best work produced.

deep in the heart of newspapers, we have a problem. no wonder we're down to our last breath.