Field Guide to Covering Sports. Joe Gisondi
his story idea, but the magazine’s editor invited him in.
Stout did not have a single clip, had never tried to write a magazine piece, and had majored in creative writing, not journalism. Yet the editor took a chance, buying the story on the Red Sox manager’s suicide for $300 on spec.
“I still had the idea in my head that I wanted to be a writer, but really had no plan on how to become one, but knew I could write,” Stout says. “I’d been reading sports stuff for fun forever. So I worked my ass off for a week at a time when you had to write longhand and then go to the typewriter, and turned in the story. He bought it as is, and asked me what I wanted to write about next. I blurted something out, and he gave me a contract for another story for $500. I was their sports columnist for the next three years and have never been without a writing assignment since. I’ve sold virtually everything I’ve tried to.”
L. Jon Wertheim, now a veteran writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote a profile on the New Jersey Nets’ Chris Dudley for Hoop magazine, an assignment that was a thrill for him when he was a college senior at Yale, partly because he could escape a few nights of scraping uneaten food off plates.
“The pay was something like $250, which doesn’t sound like much now,” Wertheim says, “but it was about 40 hours worth of wages working at the dining hall, so I figured I had pulled a fast one.” Today Wertheim is an executive editor and senior writer for Sports Illustrated and si.com.
Countless reporters enter the profession at high school basketball courts and football fields in small towns, at minor league ball fields, and in hockey rinks. There is no single path to success, although hard work, curiosity, and perseverance are excellent guides.
At the same time, there is no such thing as the typical sports story. Cookie-cutter approaches lead to stale, uninteresting stories. Instead, take chances and cultivate a voice, as you take readers through sports events.
“You’re looking at a game from a point of view,” says Bob Ryan, author and award-winning writer for The Boston Globe. “That’s the key phrase. Why would you send someone to cover a game if you’re going to force them into a very rigid box of formality? You could just take the wire story.”
Sports writers need to be confident, taking chances like a coach or player. “I think more writing is destroyed by an abundance of caution than by risk,” Stout says.
Sports Insider: On Criticism
I’ve been a full-time writer since 1993 and keep doing this because it beats working. But it is important for young writers to understand that you never arrive—each time you kick in a door there’s another one, and no one really cares what you did in your previous assignment. But it is not for everyone, because each minute you spend writing is a minute you spend alone inside your own head, and some people can’t handle that. And your work is out there 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.
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