and 3,684 on its YouTube channel, but none have the impact of Facebook. Still, it’s important to create accounts on every social media channel to reach as many people as possible. Sports journalists need to know how to use social media to research, to report and to promote content. This is no longer an option.
Reporting Is Vital
Before writing a feature, figure out why you want to do it. Your editor is sure to ask you, and your readers are sure to wonder. What’s the news angle, the peg? In other words, why write it now?
For example, if you’re pitching a profile, why now? Did a player recently perform well, scoring 40 points or striking out 15 batters? Has a coach recently faced a personal challenge or been hired? Some stories are connected to news events—a coach gets hired or fired, a player gets injured or breaks a record, or players are tampering with bats in order to hit the ball farther and harder.
Sports Insider: On Finding Stories
The most important thing is finding good material. That sounds a little simplistic, but it’s true. What makes a good feature? Again, no easy answer. Sometimes it’s the person. Sometimes it’s the situation. And sometimes you’re surprised at what you find. Here’s a story: I had been around University of Miami football coach Randy Shannon as a player and an assistant for about 20 years. I didn’t know him well. But we’d talk occasionally. When he was named Miami’s coach, I heard a story from someone in the school that stunned me: Three of Shannon’s siblings had died of AIDS, his father had been murdered and another brother stole his identity. I asked him about this and, reluctantly at first, he talked. We talked some more. I talked with others. He saw I was serious and opened up some. He shared his vision of trying to help kids who came from the streets the way he had. It took several weeks in the summer of 2007, working between other stories. It was a tough feature to do because he was a very private person.
Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Perhaps the person you’re writing about is connected to an anniversary of an event (like the hockey gold medal game in the 1980 Olympic Games) or an amazing season (like the 1972 Dolphins, the first undefeated NFL team). Perhaps someone just died, so you are writing a more detailed obituary, one that runs days or weeks after the actual death. Or maybe you are writing a story on an issue, like composite bats, connected to a recent event such as when a softball pitcher was hit in the face with a line drive.
Features, especially the longer narratives, are all about rolling up your sleeves and doing some hard work. You can’t talk to only one or two people and get enough information to write a fully developed feature. And you can’t just sit down and offer your opinions for a column. Reporting is at the heart of any real journalism. Here are a few points to remember as you develop your stories.
Digital Assist: Tour Venues
Check out venues in your area, such as softball stadiums, basketball gymnasiums, Little League fields, fishing areas, or golf courses. The Boston Globe assembled a guide to New England’s minor league ballparks that blends photos, lists, and extended cutlines. You might even add audio with photos of nonathletes, such as a peanut vendor or an announcer on the public address system. Check out “Minor League Ballparks of New England” at www.boston.com/travel/explorene/specials/minors/parks_of_new_england/.
Prepare
You’ll need to develop new information, not just rehash what others have published or said. To find a fresh angle, you’ll have to determine what’s already been written about a person, team, or topic. Check websites set up by the teams themselves, along with those produced by news organizations and by individual players. In addition, read newspaper and magazine stories and check blogs related to these topics. Don’t forget to check social media to determine what’s new and what’s old. Eventually, you’ll have several potential angles or story ideas.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Lee Jenkins, who has written more than 100 features and 30 cover stories for the magazine, says that he allows himself time “to go through some Google rabbit holes,” to research through Lexis-Nexis to find some good material and to assemble a list of potential sources. Then he’ll make some initial phone calls, setting up interviews and collecting background information, before he interviews the primary subject for any story. He realizes, working primarily with professional players, that he won’t always get much access—perhaps 30 minutes to an hour or two at an arena or hotel—so he needs to learn as much as possible from other people. He rarely gets the opportunity to hang out with a profiled player, unable to observe and collect stories as the proverbial fly on the wall. Instead, he needs to collect information from his sources to supplement interviews with a story’s protagonist.
Even if you only have a day or two to prepare for a feature story, put in as much time as you can in order to more fully understand the individual or topic and to include as many voices as possible. One-source stories are typically uninteresting and one-sided.
▸ Do your homework. Tyler Dunne sought story ideas when he started his beat covering the Green Bay Packers for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, so he called each rookie’s position coach from college to unearth something fresh and unpublished. While chatting with Hawaii running backs coach Brian Smith, Tyler asked: “Is there something about Alex (Green) many people don’t know about him?” Smith revealed that Green struggled being away from his daughter. Dunne thought he had his angle. “Right then, the radar goes off,” Dunne said. “Something’s here. There’s emotion.” But of course, Dunne was only partially correct. As with any story, the more one digs the more one learns. Dunne dug much deeper, eventually learning that Green suffered from dyslexia, a learning disorder that had been recently diagnosed after 20 years. Ultimately, Dunne spoke with Green’s running backs coach, his agency representative, his mother, and his academic advisor at University of Hawaii.
Observe
Once you’ve determined the main characters in your story, look for the main places where significant scenes are likely to happen. To gain a different perspective, visit places away from the playing fields, such as a player’s old high school, a river where a rower trains, or a coach’s home or office. What’s on the walls of the coach’s office? What does the high school basketball gym smell like? Whom does a player pal around with away from the field? Or perhaps you travel to a town in Texas to learn more about an NFL player’s roots, walking through town, chatting with residents, and absorbing the sights and sounds:
“Tomlinson Hill is not listed on maps. Locals refer to it as a settlement, not a town. It does not have a post office, a gas station or a store. It is not really even a hill; the altitude rises slightly from nearby Marlin and Lott. Cows graze on either side of dirt roads. Dogs run unleashed in the streets. Their barking pierces the country quiet.”2
Or maybe you are invited to dinner with a major league baseball manager you are profiling, watching him make venison burgers and collard greens. You pause and take note of the moment: the sun slanting through the window and filling a window-lined nook. As you eat, you notice a curious picture that hangs behind this person’s head, seemingly out of place in his home décor, so you
