forever, and sometimes the object of criticism, so it helps to have a thick skin as well.
Glenn Stout, editor, The Best American Sports Writing series
Clerking Is a Great Way to Learn
Many newsrooms have high school or college students working as clerks on the sports desk. They take scores by phone from coaches. They ask questions about key plays and players. And they write. By the end of the night, a clerk may knock out more than 10 short game stories.
And by the end of a month, clerks will have honed their skills and increased their speed, making it much easier to develop a single story on deadline.
Clerking enables younger reporters to write tight, concise stories. “Cover the game or write a feature, but it’s tough to do both at the same time,” says Jim Ruppert, longtime sports editor for The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Illinois.
Typical game stories focus on action at the end of the game first, because these later plays are usually most significant or most memorable. Sometimes, writers leap around, focusing on key plays as they relate to trends: a pitcher inducing several double plays or a football team making several defensive stops. Usually, plays are described when they define a trend, spark a rally, address an unusual circumstance, illustrate a storyline, or change the momentum in a game. Writers, though, never record the game from beginning to end.
“The game story should tell you a little about the status of each team and the thoughts and emotions of the coaches and key players who made tonight’s events happen,” says Art Kabelowsky, assistant sports editor for the Wisconsin State Journal. “Anecdotes and good quotes are better than play-by-play.”
Tell the story through the eyes of those involved. Interview as many athletes as possible. Let the reader see the plays evolve through the athletes’ eyes. And complement these descriptions with your own astute observations. Of course, that means taking detailed and copious notes.
Plus, take chances. Be creative. Borrow ideas from other writers.
Ultimately, your success relies on preparation—research and detailed observation—even if you shift gears to a new main theme on deadline. “Have an idea what might be the story,” says Rich Chere, hockey beat writer for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. “But very often that does not turn out to be the post-game story. Be flexible. You cannot stick with your assumed story if something more interesting or important happens.”
Sports Insider: On Drama
I’m something of an accidental tourist in sports writing. I got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in print journalism but always envisioned myself as a news reporter or perhaps, a business reporter. The first job I was offered was in features copy editing. I took it, because it was at a good newspaper where I had interned as a reporter. Within a year, they offered me a reporting position—covering high school sports. For the first couple years, I didn’t see myself remaining a sports reporter for long. But over time I realized I enjoyed the inherent drama involved (some-one wins, someone loses), the life stories, and the freedom sports reporters have to really develop their own writing style. These are the things that keep me going still today.
Vicki Michaelis, USA Today
Reporting Is Essential in New Media Landscape
The skills you develop clerking and writing will serve you well no matter where technology goes. Reporters now tweet updates at live events, post audio, video, and stories read increasingly on smart phones, and rely on additional social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Snapchat to both report news and interact with sources. These new approaches require that sports reporters blend solid reporting skills, journalism principles, and savvy technical skills. Instead of merely inserting interview responses into print stories, sports reporters now frequently post audio or video clips into digital stories, editing them for length and quality—a common practice for all journalists. Knowing what to ask is valued regardless of whether reporters query sources through traditional methods (face-to-face, phone call) or through newer approaches, such as text message, Facebook, Linkedin, or e-mail, or Twitter. General questions will usually receive vague responses, regardless of the medium, so be very clear when you use text, and so forth, scripting questions that offer context as well as clear, concise questions. Traditional methods will almost always yield a deeper—and sometimes serendipitous—dive into topics. But rolling deadlines and access issues often force sports reporters to use these other approaches as well. Either way, sports reporters need to understand as much as they can about teams, players, issues, budgets, and games in order to ask intelligent, evocative questions.
As with anything in sports journalism, preparation is essential, whether the end result is a blog post, radio interview, TV game package, or print feature. Even as fans increasingly rely more heavily on new media and technology, journalistic approaches remain as important as ever. The best sports entities offer new information, terrific narratives, unique perspectives, statistical analysis, and beautiful images—not unlike the best print sports sections.
Sports Insider: Breaking a Locker-Room Barrier for Women (WITH THE HELP OF A LONG NOTEBOOK)
All week long at the Miami Herald, there had been a tremendous buildup to the big event. There had been meetings, phone calls, more meetings.
The occasion?
I was to go into my first men’s locker room that Saturday night.
The Miami Dolphins were playing the Minnesota Vikings in a 1980 preseason football game at the Orange Bowl. I was a 22-year-old summer intern at the Herald, between my undergraduate and master’s years at Northwestern, and sports editor Paul Anger assigned me to write a sidebar on the visiting team. That required going into the locker room to interview the players after the game. The NFL still had no policy about women reporters being allowed to go into men’s locker rooms; some were open, some were not, based on the whim of the team.
The Vikings’ locker room was going to be open that night.
The significance of the night was twofold: It was not only going to be the first time I had ever been in a men’s locker room, it also was to be the first time a woman had ever been in the Vikings’ locker room.
Four years earlier, my moving into a coed dorm at Northwestern University had been a bit of an issue in our household. Now I was telling my parents in Toledo about this new development over the phone.
I asked my Dad for advice.
“Just keep eye contact at all times, honey.”
My father always made me smile.
The game was Saturday night, August 23, 1980. I dressed conservatively in a simple skirt and blouse. I purposely wore the skirt. It was the closest I could come to a neon sign: Warning! Here comes a woman!
The Vikings beat the Dolphins, 17–10. As soon as the game ended, a group of reporters was allowed into a room adjacent to the Vikings’ locker room to interview their venerable coach, Bud Grant. As he spoke, male reporters peeled away, one by one, to walk into the locker room. Soon, I was alone with Grant. I asked him a few questions about the game. From watching him on TV for years, I expected him to be gruff. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When we were finished, I turned toward the locker room.
“Are you going in there?” Grant asked. He sounded sincere,
