Oklahoma student newspaper does basic reporting, gets media session canceled

[MeanGreenATO]

In the latest installment of "Covering College Football Today," Oklahoma suspended all media availability for the week after the student newspaper decided to stake out the practice to see if Spencer Rattler was still on the team/benched following his awful showing against Texas.

 

[wicked]

Good on that student reporter. How much were the media going to get from those availabilities that isn’t boilerplate anyway?

 

[PaperClip529]

I would hardly describe what the Oklahoma students did as "basic."

 

[Alma]

Good on that student reporter. How much were the media going to get from those availabilities that isn’t boilerplate anyway?

Eh. This is the kind of stunt you do once, and you'd better do it for reasons bigger than which QB is taking No. 1 reps. (If a team is practicing four hours or something.)

"Availability" = interviews. Those are nice to have when it's the No. 3 team in the nation.

I'm not sure what Lincoln Riley accomplishes by punishing everyone else. It's not like the regular beat media is monitoring what the OU Daily is doing.

One more thing: Is the "public building" a parking garage? An academic hall? With binoculars? Really? The OU kids had to live up to the most laughable stereotype of what media will do?

 

[Fdufta]

Really creative reporting, IMO. Kudos to them.

 

[Alma]

Creative, IMO, isn't the word for it. Everybody who'd cover that program would know they could do that.

Brash. It is that. We wanna know who the No. 1 QB is in practice and we'll go to Wilson Hall with binoculars to find out. Again, you get to do it once.

 

[wicked]

Eh. This is the kind of stunt you do once, and you'd better do it for reasons bigger than which QB is taking No. 1 reps. (If a team is practicing four hours or something.)

"Availability" = interviews. Those are nice to have when it's the No. 3 team in the nation.

I'm not sure what Lincoln Riley accomplishes by punishing everyone else. It's not like the regular beat media is monitoring what the OU Daily is doing.

One more thing: Is the "public building" a parking garage? An academic hall? With binoculars? Really? The OU kids had to live up to the most laughable stereotype of what media will do?

You say it’s only for the No. 1 quarterback spot… but yes, for the third-ranked team in the country. It’s been a national story all week whether you like it or not, and Riley could’ve nipped it in the bud by saying Rattler is the starter and that’s that. I’m sure OU has more money than God and they must have an indoor practice facility. Want secrecy? Practice there. It’s almost as if Riley wanted this out.

And that reminds me of Mike Gundy ripping the columnist for the QB criticism… and it came out later that Gundy’s assistants (I’m sure with his knowledge and approval) provided lots of the background.

These guys are the first people who will go after the “fake media” when they set up the perfect scenario for “fake media” to get a “scoop.”

 

[Oggiedoggie]

The journalism building is next to the practice fields. I don’t know how the view from the roof is.

One of our kids lives in a dorm across the street from the fields. He had a room with a window with a view of the field, but had to sign a waiver saying he was OK with having a film on the window that makes everything fuzzy. He moved to a different side.

We sometimes forget that the university is built around the football program.

 

[ChrisLong]

We did the same thing when Tommy Maddox beat out Bret Johnson for UCLA's starting quarterback job. A reporter went to the top of the parking garage next to the UCLA practice field. He saw that Johnson wasn't there. We reached him by phone later that morning, said he didn't know what he was going to do. He then transferred to Michigan State.

When they were in Anaheim, the Rams barred the media from practice. The writers went onto a golf course next door and watched from the other side of the chain-link fence.

Pete Carroll at USC, as a motivational tool, dressed up a mannequin in a blue and gold UCLA sweatshirt. A student aid took it to the top of an adjacent parking structure. At Carroll's signal, the aid shouted, "Hey, what are you doing here?" As all the players looked up to see what was going on, the aid grabbed the mannequin and threw if off the roof.

 

[User 150927]

I applaud these young journalists for going after the story they wanted. Was it a stunt? Maybe. But maybe they really want to know who's taking reps with the first team. It's not like it's a small story. And clearly the official line was no comment.

 

[JimmyHoward33]

Colleges coaches make this stuff a bigger deal by being big babies about it.

If they didn’t muzzle all the kids, reporters wouldn’t run to their parents for quotes and info. If practice was open, no one would be on the roof with Spygate glasses on.

A media shutout gives this story extra legs. Lincoln Riley is an idiot for that.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Don’t these kids know they need to run the story past Lincoln Riley for proofreading?

 

[Alma]

I’ve said what I’ve said. Again: You can do it once as a student journalist. Anybody else isn’t doing it because, if you’d like to work that beat, pulling a pair of binoculars and going to the fifth floor of a building isn’t how professionals generally do things unless there’s malfeasance/ethical violations to uncover.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

I’ve said what I’ve said. Again: You can do it once as a student journalist. Anybody else isn’t doing it because, if you’d like to work that beat, pulling a pair of binoculars and going to the fifth floor of a building isn’t how professionals do things.

LOL

Gueas you have @ChrisLong on ignore.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Wait a cotton pickin' minute.

Where were the beat writers on this story? Lesson 1 of CFB 101 is you take roll at practice.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Eh. This is the kind of stunt you do once, and you'd better do it for reasons bigger than which QB is taking No. 1 reps. (If a team is practicing four hours or something.)

"Availability" = interviews. Those are nice to have when it's the No. 3 team in the nation.

I'm not sure what Lincoln Riley accomplishes by punishing everyone else. It's not like the regular beat media is monitoring what the OU Daily is doing.

One more thing: Is the "public building" a parking garage? An academic hall? With binoculars? Really? The OU kids had to live up to the most laughable stereotype of what media will do?

I'm not sure I understand your critiques here. If you're covering a top-5 D-I football team and you are a student writer, the clock is ticking (you're not gonna be there forever building contacts and relationships that will pay off with a bigger scoop) and there's no bigger reason than a QB controversy. And by being peers with the athletes, these kids probably have sources the rest of the press corps does not, which opens up the possibility for stories like these. We can argue/agree all day long that the importance of OU football is overblown, but the resourcefulness of these kids should be lauded and will hopefully motivate them to continue pushing back once they're out in the "real world."

Plus, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. As noted earlier, this would be a non-story if Lincoln Riley wasn't an asshole. Hopefully the kids pushing back raises their profiles and yields them a faster track in this godforesaken profession. Reminds me of last year, when the Yankees and/or their Triple-A affiliate exploited the pandemic by not allowing writers on the premises to cover the alternate site. The local beat writer watched the entire season from an overpass across the street and ended up as the subject of feature stories while making appearances on WFAN. All that could have been avoided if the Yankees had just opened up the ****ing press box to Scranton's one beat writer.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Kid did a great job and someone should, but won't, hire him. This is an ethical issue compared to Schefter? Gimme a ****in' break.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Kid did a great job and someone should, but won't, hire him. This is an ethical issue compared to Schefter? Gimme a ****in' break.

In a business growing younger by the day, the only way these kids don't get decent postgrad gigs out of this is if they are smart enough to do something else with their lives. Do it, kids. Do something else.

 

[PaperClip529]

In a business growing younger by the day, the only way these kids don't get decent postgrad gigs out of this is if they are smart enough to do something else with their lives. Do it, kids. Do something else.

I don’t buy the first part of your argument at all. The kids did something that they likely will not be able to replicate at their first post-college gig (the spying on practice part, not the calling the parents part). It was smart and they should be applauded for executing this plan, but I am very skeptical that this is going to open a bunch of doors.

 

[WriteThinking]

I’ve said what I’ve said. Again: You can do it once as a student journalist. Anybody else isn’t doing it because, if you’d like to work that beat, pulling a pair of binoculars and going to the fifth floor of a building isn’t how professionals generally do things unless there’s malfeasance/ethical violations to uncover.

If those professionals got beaten by those college reporters with the news, you can bet they heard about it.