Writing a Review of NBA All-Star Weekend

For my school paper this week, my assignment is to write a review of NBA All-Star Weekend. As we've discussed before, it's hard to come up with anything original when covering national sports for a school paper. I'd like to try to relate to my school somehow, but I really don't know if that will be possible. So if anyone has any tips or ideas for this story, I'd appreciate the help, thanks.

 

What kind of school paper is not 100 percent "things about the school"?

 

Sadly far too many high school newspapers are not 100 percent about their schools.

I often pick up the paper from my high school alma mater and am appalled when it has stories about professional sports instead of coverage of some of the school's teams.

Those professional sports stories are almost flawed for one reason or another, mainly because of a lack of information or anyone challenging the students with what they write.

Cappaman would learn more and his or her readers would learn more if there was something about one of his/her school's teams instead of the NBA All-Star Game.

 

I love reading high school papers. There's those fascinating gamers where they interview cheerleaders and benchwarmers, and the heck with the guy who just set a school record -- not to forget the constant use of "we" instead of the school's name.

BT and Mr. X are right. If high school papers aren't hyperlocal, then what is? Regionals are coming up, if they haven't started already. That should be the focus.

But since we're being asked for advice ... if this assignment was given today, it's too damn bad. Now, if you'd been given it a few days earlier, you've got time to arrange to watch All-Star Saturday or the game itself with some of the players on the school team and get reactions. That's still possible, but it won't be as good as it could have been.

 

I appreciate the responses so far, but I just wanted to clear something up: this isn't a high school paper. This is a college newspaper. I'm not sure if that makes any difference, but I just wanted to let you guys know.

 

Sorry, cappamna, whoever is giving you these assignments for a (weekly?) college paper is totally misguided. Your review/opinion of the NBA All-Star weekend -- probably running a few days after the fact -- is worthless, and I donlt mean that as a criticism of whatever you would write, just on the general nature of the assignment.
You should be reporting and writing about sports on campus. Surely there are3 athletes with goodstories to be told or teams to write about.
Watching TV and giving your opinion with no access to anythning other than what you saw does nothing to help you improve as a reporter.

 

No I totally understand and agree with what you're saying. Our paper lost funding for a semester in the fall, but now it's back for the spring semester. Two years ago I was asked to be one of the sports editors, but I had to decline because I played soccer and the schedules would not have worked together. This past week, the front-page headline was misspelled and a page was printed twice, so a few stories were accidentally cut out from the paper.

The paper isn't doing itself any favors so far. The two sports editors like to have one national sports piece a week, though, and two of those assignments have gone to me. I might be misguided here, but I wouldn't mind having a few more decent clips from this semester (my last) to add to my collection. However, I don't think any national review I write is going to make for a worthy clip. I'm not just writing for the paper to get clips. I'm doing it because I want to write, but a couple decent stories wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

Sorry for the rant. I'm happy that our paper is back, but I'm getting frustrated with it. If there's any way you guys think I can semi-salvage these "national" assignments, let me know.

 

Convince the powers-that-be that they should be scrapped entirely.

 

Shakira sucked.

There, that's a review for you. And it'll make it in on space budget too.

 

Nine guys stand around and watch the guy with the ball shoot an uncontested J, watch him drive to the basket for an uncontested dunk, or watch him throw an alley-ooop to the only other moving man on the court.

From the "highlights" I saw, that just about sums it up.

 

Speaking as a former college newspaper editor, any chance you can just take the whole operation over? Is there a faculty adviser that you can go to? You're going to lose your audience anyway if you stick with the national stuff. If things are really that effed up on the sports side, is news any better? Speaking kind of from experience, some decent to good news clips are going to be more valuable than just about any kind of national piece you do.

 

I think covering the Olympics is next for the paper, as well as Obama's next presser.