Byline on gamer when writer doesn't go to the game

[ondeadline]

I've been out of the business for a few years and have noticed a trend, and I'm wondering how common it is/acceptable around the country: Bylines on gamers by writers who didn't attend the game.

Some newspapers are, for example, running stories on road games written by the beat writer who didn't make the trip. The main tipoff to readers that he/she wasn't at the game is the lack of a dateline and quotes. At least in this case, the writer can provide his/her insights on a team he/she regularly covers.

I've also seen this for some college games played locally but not staffed covered in stories that appear to be written off of information provided by sports information. Again, a byline but no dateline or quotes. This seems to be more questionable.

Anybody who has worked on a sports desk has written game stories numerous times on games they didn't attend, and based on information called in by coaches. But we never considered putting our byline on top of that story.

Has this really become acceptable now?

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

As long as the writer isn't pretending to cover the game, I don't have a problem with it as much as I have a problem with the paper not sending the writer to the game. That's the bigger problem.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

I've always thought byline is OK, dateline is not. But I don't think the average reader knows what that distinction means.

Not sure what the best way of handling it is, short of putting in the story, "Bobby Beat Writer wasn't at this game," which serves no one.

 

[PaperDoll]

Most of my college-newspaper Sundays were spent calling players to ask about weekend road games we didn't attend. Those had bylines -- and quotes.

I've been more thrown off by editors who have added datelines to features written in advance and stories done by phone. I've suggested the dateline be MY COUCH.

 

[DanOregon]

I think the newspaper industry has gone so far down the road that the ethical things that used to be taboo back in the day, have been replaced by the harsh reality of economics.

 

[Tarheel316]

I've been out of the business for a few years and have noticed a trend, and I'm wondering how common it is/acceptable around the country: Bylines on gamers by writers who didn't attend the game.

Some newspapers are, for example, running stories on road games written by the beat writer who didn't make the trip. The main tipoff to readers that he/she wasn't at the game is the lack of a dateline and quotes. At least in this case, the writer can provide his/her insights on a team he/she regularly covers.

I've also seen this for some college games played locally but not staffed covered in stories that appear to be written off of information provided by sports information. Again, a byline but no dateline or quotes. This seems to be more questionable.

Anybody who has worked on a sports desk has written game stories numerous times on games they didn't attend, and based on information called in by coaches. But we never considered putting our byline on top of that story.

Has this really become acceptable now?

I sure don’t think it’s acceptable. If I’m not at the game in person and write something about the game it’s called a staff report.

 

[playthrough]

I think the newspaper industry has gone so far down the road that the ethical things that used to be taboo back in the day, have been replaced by the harsh reality of economics.

I remember when ads on the front page were going to be the end of western civilization, not to mention the newspaper industry.

 

[DanOregon]

Front page wraps? I remember when A1 was sacred ground.

 

[Kato]

My personal rule of thumb (not everyone at my paper follows it):

No dateline. Byline only if I'm able to call someone for comments or write something with a little more info about what the win/loss means in context to the season, etc. If it's just a writeup off a box score or radio/TV/online viewing, then our equivalent of "Staff Report."

I never pretend I'm there and even make sure to say the quotes came from "a phone interview after the game."

 

[thizzellewashington]

If you use secondhand quotes you can say the player "told reporters."

 

[mediaguy]

Definitely no dateline.

 

[MNgremlin]

Definitely no dateline.

Does the common reader even understand the purpose of the dateline? I'd argue 95% do not.

A couple of years ago, due to some complaints, we added datelines to everything to make it easier for readers to find out where a game is played at, whether we are there or not. Our dateline indicates the location of the game, not location of where the story was filed from. A game played in Dimville that was called in to our Podunk office for a brief gets the Dimville dateline, whether it's in our coverage area or not.

 

[Dog8Cats]

The byline signifies original, on-site reporting. (You don't put bylines on re-fashioned news releases, either.) Putting a byline on what is traditionally regarded as the "gamer," if the reporter wasn't present, is misleading. Even if putting a byline on a gamer that wasn't personally staffed signifies nothing to 99.9 percent of the readers, it's a poor practice, professionally speaking.

If the product of a non-staffed "gamer" is more of what is traditionally called a second-day take or what we'd call a "live feature" -- a feature/profile of someone wrapped inside the report of the athlete's most recent game -- that is different. In that case, byline is appropriate, but no dateline if the site of the game wasn't local.

 

[WolvEagle]

Former sports reporter here ... For the daily I worked for, I was the main rewrite guy on my shifts, handling two DI universities (the non-revs on rewrite), an NAIA university and preps. Byline was "From Staff Reports" and there was a dateline. For the nondaily I worked for (covering preps), byline with no dateline if I didn't attend. Most of those stories were league/division roundups, anyway.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Does the common reader even understand the purpose of the dateline? I'd argue 95% do not.

A couple of years ago, due to some complaints, we added datelines to everything to make it easier for readers to find out where a game is played at, whether we are there or not. Our dateline indicates the location of the game, not location of where the story was filed from. A game played in Dimville that was called in to our Podunk office for a brief gets the Dimville dateline, whether it's in our coverage area or not.

This is now the standard for a dateline.

Readers have never understood that in the past the story was "filed" from such dateline. They look at it as the place where the story took place. It's common sense really, and after decades of doing something nobody understood, newspapers have started to adopt the dateline as a place of the story's origin and not the place where the story was filed.

 

[daytonadan1983]

From the SID side, we have the same principle for when I do a full gamer -- no byline on the gamer unless I'm there.

Case in point. Bethune-Cookman vs. Nebraska.

I didn't make the trip because we felt it was better to spend to send our photographer to capture the images of once in a lifetime game. Also, I had a volleyball senior tonight and a tennis tournament and those are my primary sports. No runzas for me. No big deal. Volleyball and tennis are my guys and gals.

I knew what would happen -- Boss had logistical clusterfraks and they were scrambling to get back to the charter. "Dan, need a gamer. Lunch next week."

No problem.

Here's the deal, I churned a very passable 700-word gamer off of quotes and play-by-play that would have been practically the same had I been in Lincoln. You can only do so much with 45-9.

Lincoln dateline? Yes. Didn't put a byline on it, but I did get one on my follow column, the chance to do a phone interview w/Tom Osborne for the pregame show and some really delicious wings on Wednesday. Worked out just fine.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Lincoln dateline? Yes. Didn't put a byline on it, but I did get one on my follow column, the chance to do a phone interview w/Tom Osborne for the pregame show and some really delicious wings on Wednesday. Worked out just fine.

In an instance like this, my newspaper uses the dateline. It freaking tells where the damn game was. But, we would use "Staff report" rather than a byline of the person who wrote it. This is supposed to distinguish that we were not there. I think readers have figured this out as they have asked about it over time.

 

[Batman]

In an instance like this, my newspaper uses the dateline. It freaking tells where the damn game was. But, we would use "Staff report" rather than a byline of the person who wrote it. This is supposed to distinguish that we were not there. I think readers have figured this out as they have asked about it over time.

Shoot, "Mr. Staff Reports" is our busiest sports writer these days.

Here's a follow-up question, though. During football season I've had three games to chase down on Friday night in addition to whatever one I was at. I'd occasionally do drive-bys on the other coaches afterward if they were playing in town. Swing by the fieldhouse or, in the case of one coach, his actual house (it was right on the way back to the office from another field and he preferred to do it there instead of sitting around at the field for an extra 15-20 minutes). I'm not at the game, but still doing in-person reporting legwork. Is a byline acceptable for those? I never used to do it, but I think I did it some this year.

 

[ADanielPandR]

This is now the standard for a dateline.

Readers have never understood that in the past the story was "filed" from such dateline. They look at it as the place where the story took place. It's common sense really, and after decades of doing something nobody understood, newspapers have started to adopt the dateline as a place of the story's origin and not the place where the story was filed.

This is going back almost a decade now, but when I worked in a college publications office, this was our approach as well. We did countless stories on students pursuing jobs or service initiatives in their hometown or on alumni in their latest endeavors, and almost all of our reporting was done from the office via phone or e-mail. When we weaved our interviews into a story, we always tacked on a dateline, even if the events took place in the city we were in.

 

[ADanielPandR]

In cases like this, where does everyone's publication stand on putting the byline above the article versus at the bottom? I recall some instances where the primary reporter would cover an event remotely, or even cases where they were there in person but had their dispatches substantially rewritten, and got an italicized "...contributed to this report" credit beneath the text.