The Essentials of Sports Reporting and Writing

Scott Reinardy, Wayne Wanta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317669302
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Studi sulla comunicazione

In The Essentials of Sports Reporting and Writing, authors Scott Reinardy and Wayne Wanta employ their own professional experience as sports writers and editors to give students a useful and practical view of the sports writing profession. The text is divided into readily digestible sections, covering essential topics such as types of stories; background and preparation; interviewing; the beginning stages of writing; and conclusion writing.

Through real-life examples, readers learn the in-and-outs of writing columns, advances and follows, sidebars, profiles, and features, as well as the stylistic and ethical considerations that go into writing sports content.

New to the second edition are:

• "Professional Perspectives" where working sports journalists give their insiders' look at the work they do.
• A chapter on the intricacies of international event reporting
• A chapter providing an honest view of what life as a sport journalist entails.

A companion website also accompanies the text. It includes supplemental materials for students and pedagogical support for instructors, including slide presentations, quizzes, and sample assignments.

Intended for journalism students planning a career in sports reporting, this text offers key insights on the practical and personal aspects of the work.

Chapter 1

Introduction

The Field of Sports Journalism

Sports journalism is more pervasive today than ever. We now have several sports cable networks, 24-hour sports talk radio stations and, of course, the Internet, where Googling Green Bay Packers will produce71 million hits in 0.33 seconds.

Not only is sports reporting permeating society, sports figures are the subject of news stories in an unprecedented manner. Ray Rice’s suspension for domestic violence, for instance, warrants front-page coverage in newspapers.

The Super Bowl used to be that once-a-year sporting event everyone watched but now several events have become societal spectacles to specific audiences. Monday Night Football was quaint, but now it’s “All my rowdy friends are coming over tonight.” It’s entertainment as much as sports.

Sports is news. News is sports.

Differences Between Sports and News

While sports stories have many similarities to news stories, there are many differences as well. Some differences include:

• Leads. News stories tend to be straightforward and factual. Sports stories tend to be more creative and unusual.

• The five Ws: News stories try to answer the basic questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how. Sports stories concentrate on why and how.

• People and places. News stories concentrate on buildings: the courthouse, the police station, etc. Sports stories concentrate on people.

• Objectivity. News stories try to provide balanced information without opinionated statements. Sports stories often include evaluations of players and teams.

• Sources. News reporters typically keep their distance from people they use as sources. Sports reporters often travel with teams and thus have close relationships with some of their sources.

• Events. Sports reporters usually know when and where an event will take place and therefore can write advances. News reporters most times do not know when an event will take place and therefore must react to news events.

Similarities Between Sports and News

News and sports stories, on the other hand, share many similarities.

• Emphasis on accuracy. Nothing is more important to preserving the credibility of a reporter than accuracy.

• Ethical standards. Sports reporters most times follow the same ethical standards as news reporters.

• Fairness and objectivity.

• News-gathering routines. Both sports and news reporters gather information in similar ways. Both tend to be highly reliant on sources for quotes and information. Both use news judgment in determining what is and isn’t news.

• Vividness in writing. Both sports and news reporters try to make events understandable for readers. As Walter Lippmann wrote in his 1922 book Public Opinion, reporters try to take the world outside and produce pictures in our heads.

History of Sports Journalism

When and where sports news first appeared is unclear. Sports journalism nonetheless has a long tradition in American newspapers. Sports stories appeared in newspapers as far back as the 1700s. In 1733, the Boston Gazette, for instance, ran a story on a boxing match between John Faulcomer and Bob Russel (Beck and Bosshart, 2003). In 1832, the New York Herald published a story about a boxer who died after losing a 120-round bout.

In the early 1800s, industrialization in the Eastern US led to many changes in society. One of those changes was an increased interest in spectator sports. In 1829, the nation’s first sports newspaper – the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine – was published. The horse-racing publication lasted 15 years (see an archive of the publication at https://archive.org/details/americanturfregi05skin). Another sports publication – Spirit of the Times – was published from 1831 to 1901 (Mott, 1962).

Not surprisingly, many of the early sports-writing innovations appeared in New York newspapers, where competition was especially fierce. The New York Sunday Mercury in 1853 is generally credited with running the first newspaper story of a baseball game (Wolseley and Campbell, 1949). Most of the early sports writers were general assignment news reporters, with the exception being reporters trained specifically to cover horse racing (Garrison, 1985).

The New York Herald became the world’s largest daily paper in 1860 with a circulation of 77,000. Two years later, the Herald’s Henry Chadwick became what is commonly considered the country’s first baseball writer (Emery, 1972). This was more than a decade before the National League was officially formed in 1876.

Also about this time, Joseph Pulitzer took over the New York World. Hoping to compete in an already saturated New York newspaper market, Pulitzer, in one of his first acts with the World, organized a separate sports department (Cozens and Stumpf, 1953).

The New York Times was equally innovative during this time. As early as 1896, when visuals in newspapers consisted mostly of woodcuts, the Times introduced a special Sunday picture section that included sports photographs from the previous week.

The biggest innovation, however, came from the New York Journal. In 1895, the Journal became the first newspaper in the United States to print an entire section devoted only to sports. Thus was formed the sports section, now a staple of daily newspapers.

Newspapers in other cities were slow to jump on the sports section bandwagon, however. The Chicago Tribune in 1899 introduced a Sunday sports section but did not publish a daily sports section until 1905. Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington started sports sections even later.

Sports journalism also made significant inroads in magazines. Egan’s Life in London and Sporting Guide was published in Great Britain in 1824 (Nugent, 1929). After it was renamed Bell’s Life in London, it reached a circulation of 75,000 in the mid-1800s. In the United States, sports coverage helped the National Police Gazette amass a national circulation of 150,000 (Betts, 1974).

Between 1880 and 1900, technology exponentially expanded the landscape of American sport. Electricity provided the means for night events, results of the events were instantaneously transmitted via telegraph, and the print media expanded its coverage, which elevated the sports page (Gems, 1996). Consequently, more newspaper column space was devoted to sports and entire staffs were hired to report and write about the less important, but more enjoyable, aspects of life.

By the 1920s, sports coverage was firmly entrenched in the nation’s newsrooms. Several legendary sports figures – Babe Ruth, Red Grange, to name two – emerged in this decade. Radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh began providing baseball scores in 1921 (Garrison, 1985).

The 1920s also was a period of flowery language in sports writing. One of the most famous sports stories of the era was written by Grantland Rice after the Notre Dame–Army game in 1924:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldrecher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.

Sports writing has indeed come a long way.

Newspapers, meanwhile, battled for scoops about athletes and teams, creating serious concerns about ethical standards of sports reporting. These ethical concerns led to the formation of a committee appointed by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that in 1927 recommended several changes for sports reporting (Carvalho, 1998). This committee recommended increasing coverage of amateur athletics and ending free publicity for upcoming sporting events.

Ethical concerns, of course, persist today. Some newspapers are so concerned with ethical behavior by their staffs that they refuse to allow their sports reporters to attend events without paying to enter the sports venue. Some newsroom workers also are concerned about sports journalists who become friends with athletes and thus do not keep professional distances from sources.

During the ensuing decades, sports sections and staffs expanded as the “toy department” provided a multitude of forums in which to tell its stories. Sports was packaged and delivered similarly to the other sections of the newspaper, constantly growing in readership, if not respectability. Sports magazines, radio, television, cable television, and the Internet revolutionized how Americans received their sports information, and it provided the opportunity for sports writers to become multimedia celebrities in their own right. And, similar to the late 1800s, technology and opportunity would once again allow athletes to play the role of journalists.

The modern era of sports reporting was ushered in with the advent of television. Televised sporting events made instant celebrities of some sports journalists. Howard Cosell became a household name because of his work with Monday Night Football and professional boxing. More recently, sports writers have expanded into other media. Tony Kornheiser, a longtime reporter for the Washington Post, not only has his own television program on ESPN (Pardon the Interruption), but he also was hired to provide color commentary on Monday Night Football.

Perhaps the biggest innovation in sports journalism was the creation of ESPN, the 24-hour cable sports network. ESPN to sports fans is what MTV is (or was) to music enthusiasts and CNN is to news junkies. All three networks debuted and evolved during the same period of time when cable television was growing into a significant player in the television industry during the early 1980s.

With ESPN, sports fans no longer had to wait for the morning paper or stay up to watch the late news to receive scores and highlights. Sports fans are no longer just detached viewers. ESPN has made everyone an expert, to some degree. If you watch enough ESPN you will be able to coach the motion offense, explain a nickel package, and demonstrate the proper grip in throwing a circle change. With a nation of know-it-all sports fans, there’s far more scrutiny of coaches and players. Sure, fans have always had a tenacity to scream advice from the stands. What’s different now is their advice might actually be good advice – and they know it.

With the expanded fan scrutiny comes more media scrutiny. We live in a “win-at-all-cost” society. Nice guys not only finish last but they are unemployed. With sports talk radio, 24-hour TV sports coverage and websites and blogs, there is no escape for a struggling coach, player, or team. The expectation for a team’s success has been exacerbated by the exposure. More exposure means more pressure to win.

ESPN has placed an enormous lens on the athletes. Through competition, ESPN has encouraged other media, primarily newspapers, to be more diligent in their coverage. No medium wants to be beat on a story. ESPN scares newspapers.

Consequently, that coverage has amplified the profiles of athletes. Athletes know they’ve made it when they are highlighted on ESPN. They enjoy being invited to be on the (insert advertisement) Hot Seat or are discussed on Pardon the Interruption. To some degree, ESPN can make and break athletes because many media follow ESPN’s lead. If it reports that a player is a jerk, the player has to be concerned about how that will play in other media. That’s particularly true for middling athletes who do not have superstar allure.

Along these same lines, just as media evolved, so did sport. Unprecedented wealth and opportunity arose for owners and players of sport, which led to a drastic a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: The Field of Sports Journalism
• 2 Preparation: Tools for Successful Sports Reporting and Writing
• 3 Sports Writing: The Basics
• 4 Beginnings I: Leads
• 5 Beginnings II: Advanced Lead Writing
• 6 Beginnings III: Overused Leads
• 7 Middles I: Story Structures
• 8 Middles II: Effective Interviewing
• 9 Middles III: Use of Quotes
• 10 Middles IV: Play-By-Play
• 11 Story Endings
• 12 Other Types of Stories I: Sidebars
• 13 Other Types of Stories II: Previews and Follows
• 14 Other Types of Stories III: Sports Columns
• 15 Other Types of Stories IV: Features and Profiles
• 16 Other Types of Stories V: Sports News and Enterprise
• 17 Final Points I: Stylistic Errors to Avoid
• 18 Final Points II: Sports Journalism Ethics
• 19 International Sports Reporting
• 20 The Life
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index