Tag Archives: sports journalism

Sports Reporting

Local sports coverage should be the heart & soul of every news organization

In a large city, a story about a junior college women’s basketball team going to the national finals would likely not get covered, or, at the least, would get overwhelmed by stories about the NFL Draft, NBA playoff runs, a dozen or so daily MLB games, and, of course, college football in the South.

In Orlando, we paid very little attention to local community college feats because our resources were spent on these other sports, along with pro golf and auto racing over in Daytona Beach. Orlando is really a collective of many cities that blend into one another that often don’t have a clear identity. You likely won’t find JUCO coverage in New York or Chicago sports media either. It’s just the nature of having so many things going on. In a smaller town, there are fewer distractions. 

Continue reading →
Standard
Covering Games, Teaching sports journalism

Remaining active is essential to teaching sportswriting

Covering sports is often both humbling and gratifying, more so at the prep and small college level where not as much information is readily available. As a journalism teacher, I find these reporting experiences essential to teaching, serving as a reminder what students endure each time they head to a gym or ball field.

I once had a journalism professor who was out of touch, arguing that my approach to covering a game the night before for a local newspaper had been all kinds of wrong – perhaps if viewed through his mindset, which had clearly calcified a few decades earlier. I walked over to the college counselors after class to switch my major to English. If I was going to learn about older writing, I might as well read Hawthorne, Dickens and Whitman whose words still resonate.

On this assignment, I sought to model several behaviors:

Continue reading →
Standard
Covering Games, education

Here’s some quick golf coverage exercises

Fewer sports are being played here in central Illinois and around the country, but outdoor activities that enable students to be more socially distant during competition, such as golf, tennis and cross country, have been allowed in Illinois.

That means more coverage of these three prep sports than usual.

Coaches send me screen shots of school matches for our local sports news website where I post short stories, which, of course, are longer for big events or for those that we cover in person.

As a primer for teaching golf coverage, though, these two shorter exercises work well.

Pages: 1 2
Standard
education

It’s going to be a challenge teaching sports writing, but here’s how I’ll start

It’s going to be a different, and likely more difficult, semester for many who are teaching sports writing courses across the country. Few, if any, sports might be available in some states – and even where they will be competing, interviewing athletes and coaches will be more challenging. Nobody yet has many answers, but we’re all trying. To that end, I have shared syllabi for several courses below – Writing for Sports Media, Advanced Reporting and News Writing. Would love to see yours, as well.

Pages: 1 2
Standard
education

Sports journalism exercises & handouts for a coronavirus half-semester

I’ve assembled a list of sports writing exercises and handouts for those needing additional material as we all move to teaching online for the next several months. Feel free to use, share, adapt – whatever works to help you educate students. If you would like to share your own exercises, please send them along. I will post your instructions, your name and your college/media for full credit. I’m hoping this can serve as an archive for sports media education.

Pages: 1 2
Standard
Covering Games

23 tips for delivering better live-sports game content

Writing stories about games on deadlines is not always easy, especially at the high school level where one is not delivered play-by-play, comprehensive stats, multiple quotes and players/ coaches to interview. Skills learned by covering prep sports enable one to more skillfully and artfully get more out of college and professional event coverage. After reviewing my students’ stories the past several weeks, I put together some reminders about game coverage at all levels.

Pages: 1 2
Standard
Covering Games

Back to basics: teaching, learning to write sports game stories

IMG-6817

Let’s not forget the basics.

Even if they seem obvious, we sometimes forget to apply them when covering sports events. Of course, this happens far more to newer writers, and students, who have barely been introduced to them.

Here are a few reminders I plan to offer my students this week after having reviewed their stories on college and high school basketball gamers.

In no particular order:

  1. Insert the score of a game (and do so early). The score does not have to be in the lead, but it should definitely be in first few graphs. Take a photo of the scoreboard or from the scorebook before you start postgame interviews.

Here are a few examples:

Continue reading →

Standard
General

Perhaps this journalism model can help change local sports coverage, even if we’re just trying to fill a need

website photo

I started a sports website nearly four months ago here in central Illinois.

I did not have a point to prove.

Nor a thesis to test.

Or even some lofty premise to uphold.

Although I do have pent-up anger at newspaper chains for having gobbled newspapers like a private equity firm – essentially dissembling them by eviscerating staffs, reducing coverage and pretty much divesting from local communities. As a result, you can buy a cadaverously thin local newspaper edition filled with mostly non-local news for two bucks. The newspaper still has some very good journalists, but not nearly as many as they need and with not nearly as much support as they require.

Continue reading →

Standard
Teaching sports journalism

Writing about live sports events

From time to time, I’ll offer observations from my own sports (and sometimes news writing) classes.

Assignment: Students wrote stories based upon the football exercise in the second edition of the Field Guide To Covering Sports (pp. 365-367).

Observations: Students developed leads that were general, which is often the case since they are often taught to take this approach in essays by most teachers from K-12. As a result, my students focused on leads about “regulation ending in a scoreless tie” or merely that Cocoa defeated Tallahassee Godby, 7-6, in a state title game.

Pages: 1 2
Standard