This quarter, I'm taking J470, Sports Writing, a class offered here in Scripps. It is taught by Molly Yanity, who covered the University of Washington football beat for four seasons and worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from 2001-2009. We're learning a lot about covering sports from Molly's professional experience and what's better than a class devoted to sports and writing, two of my favorite things. Through the next couple of months, I'll be posting here reaction papers written for the class as well as field work I complete. Enjoy! Here is my first reaction paper:
Though the panel discussion from this reading is from 1997, much of the same issues are still prevalent more than a decade later in 2010. No longer are newspapers just facing television coverage but a greater and ever-expanding outlet in Internet sports media. The industry professionals in this reading have some interesting insights and opinions into the balance of covering issues in sports.
I think John Walsh of ESPN brings up a few good observations. The first is simplicity. I think it is something that we forget all too often trying to come up with the next great innovation or ground-breaking story. Yes, we should be striving to uncover interesting stories and break new ground but getting too caught up in that can lead to an over-immersion and forgetting of the fundamentals. Sometimes the best stories can be the most simple, a feature on an athlete or team’s unique set of circumstances or struggles.
However, Walsh also follows that by saying that the second thing to think about is curiosity. I think we must be able to find a balance between simplicity and curiosity in our coverage. As a sports fan, I am always constantly curious of why certain things happen, why an offensive coordinator calls a certain play, why a coach starts a certain player over or another or off the playing field, why an athlete acts the way they do. As a sports journalist, and a journalist in general, I feel it is part of my responsibility to “ask the right questions,” as Walsh says. If we do our job well, we can be a real asset as an intermediary between athletes and coaches and the fans.
The discussion further branches out into how we cover these athletes and if we as journalists are indeed asking tough enough questions. Some of the journalists talk about how we have to find a way to probe athletes more, which I do agree with, as they are public figures. However, I think Jason Whitlock makes a good point. He says “I think in order to get these types of stories, you’re going to have to get these guys outside these controlled locker room environments.” I definitely agree with this. Inside an athlete’s comfort zone or with team media relations people around them, it is going to be very difficult for a reporter to dig deep.
The balance between game coverage and off-the-field stories is another interesting relationship at play. As a huge sports fan, I am most invested in the action that is occurring on the playing surfaces. However, as a journalist, I know there is a lot more to it and that sports fans are not one-dimensional. There are the diehards but there are also casual ones who are drawn in by human-interest pieces on athletes. There is also crossover as a diehard can definitely appreciate a really well-done piece that delves into an issue in sports.
However, sometimes it feels that sports coverage becomes more about pre-packaged, network agenda-driven stories. We incessantly hear about indiscretion, scandal and strife among athletes. Then whatever actual sports content we do get goes through the network media filter. As in, ever since the NHL has been on Versus, not ESPN, and NASCAR coverage has been on ESPN, there has seemed to be less hockey highlights and more NASCAR on SportsCenter. It can sometimes be hard to sift through the excess to find a well-done story or some actual sound game analysis. This balance in content is a difficult conundrum and one that definitely persists now.
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