OTL, E-ticket, please find new topics

[silentbob]

I'm a big fan of what ESPN.com does with the E-ticket and the OTL features.
That type of writing doesnt really exist anymore in newspapers. And these pieces are always well crafted and superbly written, worthy of BASW consideration in my opinion.

But I'm starting to tire of the pieces that look back at a lost loved one.

Just off the top of my head: Len Bias, Lymon Bostock, the one a couple weeks ago, another today. And I'm sure I'm missing one, two or seven.

These are all great stories, but I don't think you can keep hitting that sentimental chord with your readership. You have to space it out. There are a million stories out there that have nothing to do with death. Find them.

 

[spaceman]

how about "the death of good stories?"

 

[Joe Williams]

But writing about a death is the surest way to win an award. It's been demonstrated time and again. So what have you got against awards?! ;)

 

[WaylonJennings]

I had a streak early in my career where I wrote about five such death pieces in a row. For a while, I thought I was seriously a Writer. Then I read collections by Gary Smith and Charles Pierce and realized that stories didn't have to be maudlin to be compelling. Then I read Buster Olney's book and realized you could even write about sports and make it compelling and fascinating, not just make sports peripheral to the story.

 

[riverrats95]

Sun-Sentinel did it yesterday and I will bet that the Herald and PBP will follow with their takes today or tomorrow. It's not just ESPN with the rehash.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-pata110808,0,6322248.story

 

[SF_Express]

I was thinking about this very thing like two days ago. Not a week goes by where my local sports section seemingly doesn't have a story about some player carrying the memory of a loved one, either mom or whatever. And frankly, editors really ought to put a foot down on saying, "Enough."

This isn't to disrespect athletes who have lost somebody close, obviously. But these stories aren't new, and they're not even tear-jerking anymore.

 

[henryhenry]

this thread is right on.

if you've read one 'struggling with death' story, you've read em all.

 

[Joe Williams]

School teachers and plumbers and insurance salesman and retired old farts and rock stars and unemployed newspaper grunts all deal with the deaths of loved ones, and go about their jobs and lives.

Working up some big tearjerker on somebody who happens to sweat at a sport, either for a living or for a hobby, is a waste of emotions, time and resources. No wonder some staffs get targeted for forced shrinking, if that's the best they can come up with.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Sun-Sentinel did it yesterday and I will bet that the Herald and PBP will follow with their takes today or tomorrow. It's not just ESPN with the rehash.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-pata110808,0,6322248.story

Wow, an AP story on the anniversary of Pata's death. Nice work Sun-Sentinel.

 

[SF_Express]

Sun-Sentinel did it yesterday and I will bet that the Herald and PBP will follow with their takes today or tomorrow. It's not just ESPN with the rehash.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-pata110808,0,6322248.story

Yeah, I was surprised by that one, too.

Wow, an AP story on the anniversary of Pata's death. Nice work Sun-Sentinel.

 

[Go State]

Asking a serious question here: Do these stories keep getting done to please people pertaining to that loved one? What I mean is, if you write a story regarding one football player who lost his mom and is trucking on, doesn't that mean you have to write the same story the following week if another football player loses his mom? Are papers worried readers are going to say, "Well, you did a story on that player and his mom, so why not this player and his mom?"

I know the topic originally was started because of ESPN, but maybe it's a domino effect that has continued and reached the WWL. I could be extremely wrong, but it just seems like people are saying, "Well, we wrote that story, we should probably do this one, too."

 

[jgmacg]

Not to play contrarian, but most literature throughout most of human history is in one way or another about death. It is, after all, one of the only human experiences everyone everywhere shares.

Rather than say we shouldn't write about death - or coping with death, or fearing death, or reconciling ourselves to death - how about we say that we shouldn't write about death in the same tired ways we so often do.

 

[Joe Williams]

Not to play contrarian, but most literature throughout most of human history is in one way or another about death. It is, after all, one of the only human experiences everyone everywhere shares.

Rather than say we shouldn't write about death - or coping with death, or fearing death, or reconciling ourselves to death - how about we say that we shouldn't write about death in the same tired ways we so often do.

Works for me.

Irish wakes in "The Wire" were a nice change o'pace. (Oops, don't mean to tread on Simmons' territory.)

 

[DanOregon]

I've noticed the network seems to be doing an awful lot of them as well. I hate to channel OJ, but people die every day. Just because someone who is grieving has a connection to sports doesn't make that any more or less significant.

 

[imjustagirl]

No, but it makes it something that would be covered by a sports outlet, right?

I mean, if you're saying don't do any stories like this at all on any level with any background, fine. But I don't think a sports outlet doing a story on an athlete dealing with death makes it more important than the layman doing so. But the layman doesn't get covered by said sports outlet.

 

[tapintoamerica]

The wire story takes the trouble to mention the make and model of the victim's vehicle, but it doesn't tell us the sticker price of the car. Why throw one detail out there without the proper context? I assume the Infiniti SUV in question is rather expensive, but I'd like to know how expensive. If it's feasible that Pata did, in fact, pay for the car with the proceeds of his gigs in construction et al, let me know that. Personally, I must admit I'm skeptical because under NCAA rules, silly as they may seem, student-athletes are generally precluded from earning large sums of money during the normal academic year.
If none of this is relevant to the story, then dispense with the Infiniti SUV reference.

 

[silentbob]

I have no problem with newspapers/web sites running these stories, I just think they need to be spaced out. ESPN.com's story on the Miami player might have been the story of the year, but I didn't bother reading it because I feel like I've read that story five times already.

 

[jeff.pearlman]

This is very interesting. I wrote the referenced Lyman Bostock story ... and I also agree with what you're saying. The stories are sort of irresistible, because they combine nostalgia, tragedy, sentimentality, etc. And yet, it is easy to fall into the trap where you write these sort of things too often. There's always another Bostock, Bias, Thurman Munson, Mike Darr, etc waiting to be written; always another anniversary of a death or plane crash that a story can be tied to.

I love reading them and love writing them, but, again, you're right. We all probably go to that well too often.

 

[Monroe Stahr]

It's not just the mind-numbing succession of pieces revolving around death and dying, it's the revisits to these same stories one, five, 10, 20 years later. The business is guilty of that crap, too. Just as reprehensible, in my mind, is athletes who, when they're in a slump, let it be known that they've got something weighing on their mind: That "my half brother from my father's fourth marriage got in a car accident six months ago and sustained such a serious head injury that he think's he's my full brother."

 

[friend of the friendless]

Sirs, Madames,

On further review, two of three e-tix I've written have a death quotient. That said, neither was simply an "anniversary" piece ... the first was about two teenage athletes coping with a scout's suicide (a scout who had befriended them) and the other a town's and team's discomfort/denial in their token marking of the 20th anniversary of a bus crash that claimed four players' lives. Neither was particularly a simple life story of someone past--I don't see big merits in that. They were stories about the living coping with something death out of the ordinary. OTL thing I'm working on now has a death that's on a tangent rather than focus. I'm .500 with an asterisk I guess.

YD&OHS, etc