Sports Journalism

A Practical Introduction

Phil Andrews, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781446253380, 9781446253373
• eBook ISBN: 9781446292808
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The sports journalist of today needs to be well equipped for the digital age. From the challenges of minute-by-minute reporting to the demands of writing for online outlets, blogging and podcasting, sports journalism is now fully immersed in new and social media.

Sports Journalism: A Practical Guide will give you the skills you need to navigate these new platforms, whilst also teaching you the basics of interviewing, reporting, feature writing for print and commentary for radio and television. This new edition now includes:

• New examples demonstrating the use of social media in sports journalism
• A new chapter on the current professional working practice of sports journalism, covering the skills required of agency and freelance journalists today
• A new chapter on sports public relations
• Expanded coverage of radio and television sports journalism, with more emphasis on commentary and multi-platform working
• Quotes from working journalists, offering valuable insights into the industry.

This book is a complete guide to the practice of sports journalism across all platforms: print, online, radio, television and social media sites.

1	Introduction: the best job in the world?

 

It’s the best job in the world, isn’t it? Travelling the globe, watching the big sporting events for free from the best seats in the stadium, mingling with star players and athletes, seeing your byline in the newspapers or broadcasting to millions on radio or television, and being paid a lot of money for the privilege. That’s the way many people see a sports writer’s job. The reality can be rather different: hard and demanding work to tight deadlines; long and unsocial hours (most of them worked in the evenings or at weekends); a lot of time spent in research and preparation, acquiring the same depth of knowledge about the sports you cover as the most fanatical of your readers or listeners; earning the trust of a wide range of contacts among players, coaches and administrators; and the skill to write accurately and entertainingly at great speed and often under difficult conditions.

Nevertheless, there is no shortage of people willing to put up with all that for the undoubted rewards and satisfactions sports journalism brings. Jobs in the media, and in sports journalism in particular, are more avidly sought after than almost any other. Fortunately, the opportunities are expanding, too – though there will never be enough seats in press boxes to accommodate every aspiring sports journalist.

Sport is the fastest-growing sector in the British media, and the same applies in most other English-speaking countries. Not long ago, the exploits of muddied oafs and flannelled fools were confined to two or three pages at the back of newspapers, and to weekend afternoons on radio and television. Today, sports men and women are among the best-known and best-paid people on the planet. The world wants to read and hear about them, and the ranks of those who are paid to satisfy that demand are expanding accordingly. Sports people now feel the glare of the media spotlight more powerfully than almost anyone else in society. It’s not unusual to find a hundred journalists covering a single match in English soccer’s Premier League, and the jobs of national team managers are second in importance, in media terms, only to those of the head of state.

Sports coverage is vitally important to the health and prosperity of the print and broadcast media. The British newspaper market is the most competitive in the world, and increasingly, that competition takes place on the sports pages. From two or three pages at the back of the paper a few years ago, many national daily and Sunday newspapers have now expanded their sports coverage to daily, separate sections of up to 28 broadsheet pages – more space than they devote to general news or the arts.

In broadcasting, sport has spawned new radio stations in both the public and commercial sectors – BBC 5 Live and Talksport. It’s also in the vanguard of the battle for television ratings. The rights to cover important sporting events are fiercely contested between both terrestrial and satellite or cable channels. The success of Sky TV as a satellite broadcaster has not been built on the first television run of feature films, as originally intended, but around its acquisition of the rights to cover major sporting events live. As a consequence, the demands of the broadcasters have reshaped the sporting calendar, fragmenting the traditional Saturday afternoon hegemony in soccer, encouraging day/night cricket matches and converting rugby league from a winter into a summer sport.

The growth of the internet has generated a huge variety of websites devoted to sport, operated by media organisations, sports clubs and organisations, and fans. This new technology also means job opportunities for sports journalists because it offers an extra source of income to the media by providing sports updates and reports on the web or by mobile phone. In addition to their websites, the biggest clubs now also have their own television channels, a trend that is likely to expand as more sports organisations wake up to the commercial possibilities.

It’s not difficult to see why sport is so attractive to the media. They have the same number of pages and the same amount of airtime to fill no matter what is happening (or not happening) in the world, but hard news is an unpredictable commodity. What’s more, stories generated by governments and politicians are often found boring by many people and, as the political parties huddle together in the middle ground for popular support, have lost their power to generate controversy and debate.

Sport is the exact opposite. It is predictable in the sense that the media know months in advance when the big events are going to happen; it has its own in-built excitement and drama, and a cast of stars. Hollywood should be so lucky.

The international sporting calendar goes from World Cups to Olympic Games to Test matches to Super Bowls to Grand Nationals and Boat Races without cease. Sport could have been invented for an industry selling a daily dose of sensation.

It could also have been devised as a ready-made source of material for those who enjoy writing. That is just as important an element in successful sports writing as enjoying sport. ‘Sports writer’, as the term suggests, is made up of two words – ‘sports’ and ‘writer’ – and to succeed you will need to be enthusiastic about both. It’s not enough merely to enjoy football or athletics or racing: you must be able to convey your knowledge and enthusiasm to others in a lively and entertaining way, and to be willing to devote as much time to practising your writing skills as the sports people about whom you are writing spend practising theirs.

Sports journalism is a specialist form of writing, and it is broken down into narrower specialisms. The major sports, such as soccer, cricket, rugby, racing, golf, tennis and athletics, are usually covered by specialists in these fields. Why? Because fans know their sports and their teams inside out, and unless sports journalists want to look foolish and ill-informed, they need to be equally knowledgeable. Keeping abreast of the daily developments in a major sport is a full-time job. Only a few journalists are able to pick and choose the sports and events they cover. These are usually the brightest, wittiest or most incisive writers – columnists or feature writers with a roving brief to provide ‘colour’ pieces about the key moments in the world of sport.

But sports writing consists of more than just covering the big events. The media have space to fill, no matter what is going on, and they do so by whetting the appetites of their consumers with pieces building up to events, profiling the participants, and analysing performances, as well as with a steady flow of background news and features. And sport often bursts out of the sports pages when the activities of high-profile people hit the front pages or the top of the news bulletins, or cross over into other specialist areas such as fashion, business or medicine.

To cover sport successfully, you need to know the requirements of the medium for which you are working, and you need to understand the audience who will be consuming your work. Serious and popular newspapers and specialist sports magazines have unique styles, and sport is covered differently by print journalists and broadcasters. Radio demands a different set of skills from those of television, while internet journalism is a whole new ballgame. This book will help you to acquire those skills. The craft of the sports journalist can be learned. Indeed, beginners have a head start over those seeking to acquire almost any other skill. Many of us consume the work of professional sports journalists every day, and will have absorbed some of their skills unconsciously. What’s more, the tools of the trade are cheap and readily to hand: pen and paper and access to radio, television and newspapers are all that is required.

The following chapters break down the job of the sports journalist into its component parts, and look in detail at every aspect of the skills required. They also offer exercises designed to help you internalise those skills and hone them to professional standards.

The book ends with advice on how to get started in a very competitive field. That is something which often demands great perseverance and a long apprenticeship. But if you’re prepared for all this, sports journalism can be the best job in the world.

2	Context setting: media environments

Chapter Summary

• The media’s influence on sport

• Sport’s influence on the media

• Organisation and practice of sports departments and sports journalists

• Media markets and audience awareness

• Sport’s cultural significance

Learning Objectives

• To understand the organisation and needs of the media

• To recognise the importance of sports journalism to the media’s commercial success

• To identify the constraints within which media organisations operate in the sports market

• To understand what determines the sports agenda of news organisations in different markets

• To recognise how media audiences determine content and style

The media have an important and growing role in the culture of developed countries. As leisure time has expanded and access to radio, television and the internet has become almost universal, not only in the home but also in cars and in pubs, clubs, cafés and on the street, so the demand for material with which to fill the burgeoning number of media outlets has grown. The expansion of leisure has also led to an upsurge in public interest in sport, and a corresponding growth in the commercial success of major sports clubs and organisations. Manchester United, Real Madrid and the New York Yankees are no longer simply sports clubs but global brands.

If media organisations are to remain successful in an increasingly competitive market, they must reflect such movements in our culture and in the interests of their consumers. Indeed, the media not only reflect the culture in which they operate and the interests of their readers and viewers – they also help to form that culture and those interests.

THE MEDIA’S INFLUENCE ON SPORT

Much of the recent growth of interest in sport has been driven by the media, in particular satellite television, which has bought the rights to major sporting events and promoted them vigorously as one of the most effective ways of selling subscriptions to its services. To compete, terrestrial television (and radio) channels have had to follow suit. This has driven up the cost of media rights and vastly increased the income of sports clubs, governing bodies and professional sports men and women. It has been the major factor in turning many sports clubs into big businesses.

But the money television has put into sport has also given it the power to shape sports to its own ends. Beginning with the introduction by the Australian media mogul Kerry Packer of floodlit international cricket in the 1970s, television went on to fuel the massive growth of interest in soccer worldwide and the expansion of competitions like the European Champions League. It has even turned the traditions of some sports on their heads. Rugby league, a winter game in England for more than a century, has now become a summer sport, for the benefit of the broadcasters. Television has turned sport into a commodity and a sales tool.

SPORT’S INFLUENCE ON THE MEDIA

Media organisations have grown and adapted accordingly. New radio stations, television channels and websites have been set up devoted specifically to sport. They have developed radical new programmes such as sports phone-ins and rolling results services to attract and maintain viewers and listeners. They have also adapted the ways in which they deliver their content, to serve the ever-expanding range of mobile devices through which consumers now expect instant information. There has been a similar growth in specialist and lifestyle publications aimed at specific sections of the media audience, such as young men. They have carved out niche markets, either by covering sport in general or by devoting themselves to individual sports.

Newspapers throughout the developed world are devoting more and more space to sport. This is partly in response to the general upsurge of interest in sport, which is common to all socio-economic classes, and partly because newspapers recognise the influence of television on people’s lives, and try to reflect it in their own coverage. The fact that multinational media organisations like Rupert Murdoch’s International Media Group own both satellite television networks and newspapers, with their associated websites, has undoubtedly influenced the promotion of televised sport in those newspapers. And even those newspaper groups which do not have a stake in television have been forced to pay greater attention to televised sport because their readers subscribe to satellite television channels and have come to expect that service.

With the growth of the internet and the rapid development of devices capable of receiving online material wherever the user happens to be, the number of websites devoted to sport continues to expand. The task of making them profitable through advertising or by selling online services has proved more problematic, however. Many seek to fill their space with BLOGS and other material written by fans, the quality of which is variable, to say the least.

The best and most successful websites remain those operated by established media organisations such as the BBC, and by sports clubs and organisations which use the web as a marketing tool.

THE SPORTS DEPARTMENT

Sport is so important to media organisations that all but the smallest operate sports departments as part of their editorial teams, staffed by specialist sports journalists. In the newspaper sector, at both national and regional level, sport is one of the three traditional departments – news and features being the other two – which make up the editorial team.

The sports department is allocated its own section, either free-standing or at the back of the publication, and is responsible for filling its own pages. The department is normally headed by a sports editor, who is responsible to the newspaper’s editor, and who is expected to attend editorial conferences alongside the news and features editors, assistant editors and production executives.

The editorial conference determines the news agenda for the day and the space to be allocated to each department in the following day’s paper. The number of pages allocated to sport tends to vary from day to day, depending on the day of the week and the sporting agenda on any given day. The sports editor must know what he or she intends to fill these pages with (normally a combination of news, match reports, features and opinion pieces) and who is going to provide the copy – staff reporters, freelances or agencies. Broadcast and online media follow similar patterns.

THE SPORTS TEAM

Most newspaper sports departments will have a relatively small team of staff journalists. In addition to the sports editor there will often be a chief sports writer, whose role is normally to provide a descriptive COLOUR PIECE on the major event of the day, and who will therefore cover a wide range of sports. There may also be two or three reporters covering the dominant sport in the area, such as soccer, and perhaps a reporter covering each of two or three other major sports, such as rugby union, cricket and horse racing. Some national newspapers will have reporters covering major sports like soccer based in specific cities or areas of the country so that they can build up close relationships with clubs and individuals in the area they cover.

Other leading sports, such as rugby league, golf, tennis and at...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1   Introduction: the best job in the world?
• 2   Context setting: media environments
• 3   The sports desk
• 4   Sources
• 5   Interviewing
• 6   Reporting the action
• 7   Sports news and photography
• 8   Sports features
• 9   Broadcast media
• 10   Online journalism
• 11   Sports news agencies and freelancing
• 12   Sports public relations
• Appendix 1: Getting a job
• Appendix 2: Copyright
• Appendix 3: Legal and ethical issues
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index