While “gamers” may not appear to have the pizzazz of features or columns, they are one of the fundamental elements of sports journalism. At its core, sport revolves around the games that occur on football fields, basketball courts and baseball diamonds around the world. While game recaps may seem like boring, grunt work, when done well, they can tell not just about the details of a game but the story that is encapsulated within each game’s action.
There is a lot that can be learned on how to write a good game story from the article ‘A Plea for a Fading Form…’ by Daniel Kindred. The most significant tips I take away are that ones he includes from Jeff D’Alessio, editor-in-chief of Sporting News Magazine and Sporting News Today. D’Alessio gives five ways to separate a bland gamer from an interesting one. A big key I agree with is his first description of good game stories, that they “treat the season as if it were a novel, each game a chapter.” It is important to find the story within each game rather than just recite facts. Capturing the drama of the game through words paints a picture of it for readers who were not there.
Another description according to D’Alessio is “do single-topic ideas, more sidebars than traditional gamers.” In a sport like baseball, the grind of a full season of 162 traditional gamers would most likely get monotonous for both the beat writer and readers. However, finding the player who the game turned on or a sequence of events or some attention-grabbing storyline can break that monotony.
I agree that objectivity, analysis and details that an outsider could not get are also pieces that make up a strong gamer. In the examples of good gamers, these elements are all present. I think one of the most significant parts of the gamer (as well as most written stories) is the lead. This can immediately turn off a reader or make them want to read more. I think Molly’s UW Volleyball lead, “A record home crowd. Near-perfect serving. An answer for seemingly everything,” is a good one in that it is simple yet sets the scene of the game’s atmosphere and for what is to come in the article. She incorporates Courtney Thompson’s feelings about the record crowd. Then she explains the serving success and Washington answers. It is well done in that Molly uses setup sentences and then lets the players fill in the emotions and details.
There are also bad tactics to take note of which I will not employ in gamers. In Paul Zeise’s recap of West Virginia’s defeat of Kentucky, he uses absolutely no quotes. There is barely any information you could not have gained from reading a box score or watching the game on television. This does nothing to tell you the game’s story. The lead about the country roads is corny and cliché. Within the story are pieces that would have been better themes for the article, such as the three-point shooting discrepancy or West Virginia’s return to the Final Four for the first time in 51 years. The NCAA Tournament is all about emotion but this gamer does nothing to convey that emotion and almost sucks out it out of the game.
The high school article exhibits some of these same problems. Most noticeable is the cliché-laden lead. “At the brink of elimination,” “pulled it all together,” and a “push over the edge” are all sport clichés synthesized into a lead. The quotes from Coach Pepple are generic and do not give you much insight into the game.
From reading these articles, I will try to incorporate into my gamers the good elements of finding a hook and using that to tell the story of the game, as well as utilizing quotes that give the outsider an inside perspective. I will also try to avoid clichés and gamers overly full of straight play-by-play.
Articles discussed:
UW one win shy of third straight Final Four trip
West Virginia beats top-seeded Kentucky 73-66
M.I. heads to districts
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