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Who Should Cover the World Series?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by 21, Nov 10, 2009.

  1. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    Then your choice would be to use AP, which is fine. That's been the choice of many papers for many years. As a reader, I would be fine reading something from my newspaper's baseball writer who wasn't actually able to go to the WS if he could provide insight by watching from television. I would expect that person to supplement the TV watching-coverage in other ways -- calling some contacts, emailing or IMing, whatever you can do in the age of instant communication. But I bet the writer could come up with something compelling.

    Hell, Peter King covers the whole NFL every week by watching games on TV.
     
  2. After a few years of covering football, I have a hard time adjusting back to watching it on television as a fan. I can't see the alignments. I can't see the play develop. They spend so much time on close-ups of the head coaches that I can't see substitutions.

    I know it's a different sport, but it is absurd to think that you can see the same things on television that you can in person. Maybe in basketball.
     
  3. An intangible: Sending quality people to major events gives them one more reason to stay in a job. Of course, that's likely a muted point considering how we are all clearly throwaway items after the last couple of years.
     
  4. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    Frank's post brings me to the reason I posted that link in the first place: Fry's column really struck me as somewhat naive and out of touch with the realities of sports journalism, which surprised me on that particular site.

    I understand the argument related to cost-effective sports coverage, but unless you tell me jobs are going to be saved and the money will be poured into more enhanced coverage of something else, I just don't see what you're accomplishing here.
     
  5. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Forget the money for a moment. What are your deadlines?

    For our once-proud paper, which had to beg for an 11:45 deadline, there is nothing you can get from sending a reporter there. Not when the games ended at the earliest at 11:30.

    The further west you go, and the more a paper cares enough to grant a respectable deadline for this event, the more sending someone becomes justifiable.
     
  6. bob

    bob Member

    There seems to be a pervasive assumption that newspapers are dead and we shouldn't be throwing resources into things like live coverage. But, y'know what? We're not exactly dead. Our respective papers still sell thousands of copies a day. We still have readership. Somebody's still interested out there. We should be giving them everything they desrve, including live coverage whenever possible. We can't just say, "screw it, we're done giving the readers what they want."
     
  7. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    This is a great point, especially when you're talking about a playoff series. It's one thing to have a folo of a late-ending football game the next day because there's plenty to be gleamed in terms of analysis and such. But when your game ends at 12:10 a.m. and you can't get anything in the paper and there's a game the next day, any folo is going to be completely outdated. And the web doesn't bring in enough money to justify sending a reporter to the WS for web-only articles.
     
  8. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    I'm curious why a paper in Denver, Cincinnati, Detroit or Atlanta would send a reporter to a World Series in New York or Philadelphia. Or any national championship when it didn't have a local team involved. Is there that much of on opportunity for interaction with players other than the post-game podium press conference? Are there representatives from other teams there where you can get a jump start on hot-stove talk? It would seem that sending a writer to the local team's organizational meetings, usually held in Arizona or Florida, might be more worthwhile.
    In a perfect world, of course you'd have your own people there, but that is water under the bridge.
     
  9. Screwball

    Screwball Active Member

    No one is going to admit you to an organizational meeting.

    If your writer is going to cover games, then you could just as soon spare the expense. The days of a paper splashing "Our Guy at the World Series!" are long gone, I'm afraid. You can get insight/analysis/opinion all over the wires and web.

    If your writer is going to cover games AND do locally relevant angles and notebooks AND make contacts for the offseason AND ask Selig about whatever issue might be relevant to the local team, yes, that's worth it.
     
  10. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    That's what sports editors and assistant sports editors are for. At least, that's what they were for at my shops over the years, calling me up when I was actually covering an event to suggest I chase after something they saw on TV or heard one of the announcers talk about. It didn't seem to matter that we were spending money and otherwise trusting me, and other reporters who had similar experiences, to actually cover an event live. Because this lifetime inside-the-office person saw or heard it, it was really important and had to be attended to.

    Maybe not going to the events is better compared to that after all.
     
  11. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    I always liked the "Sports Editor saw this great game on TV, so now we need to play it up really nice" brand of news judgment.
     
  12. finishthehat

    finishthehat Active Member

    This to me is somewhat the equivalent of the days of yore (10 years ago, say), when every paper had a big-staffed Washington bureau, and someone went on every presidential trip to Asia or Europe or whatever.

    Fine, except everyone basically filed the exact same wire-type stuff from the briefings. What was the point of sending someone?

    If you send someone, send someone who's going to find a fresh angle. Use wire copy for gamers/presidential press conferences.
     
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