December 8, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Reporters live for the big story…It’s a change of pace and often times, a chance to shine…But sometimes that very same reporter becomes part of that story and that turns everything upside down…Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe and independent filmmaker Sean Pamphilon visited the Boston University sports journalism seminar series recently and both have first hand knowledge…
Ryan was a guest on WBZ-TV’s Sports Final one night in 2003 when he let his emotions get the best of him declaring, “She (Joumana Kidd) needs someone to smack her”…Host Bob Lobel immediately called Ryan out but the Globe columnist didn’t waiver, ”Why should I say anything different than I said all playoffs last year?” Ryan said…He would subsequently apologize but to this day if you ask him about it, he’ll tell you his biggest regret was becoming the story itself…
As for Pamphilon, don’t even think of mentioning his name in the state of Louisiana let alone New Orleans….When he released the audio tape of Saints Assistant Coach Gregg Williams bounty speech, Pamphilon’s world turned upside down, “I knew there would be some criticism but I didn’t expect it to come from the people I was working with. That was very different and it honestly was hurtful. I had death threats. Life changing for sure. Before that people would say, oh, man I just saw Run Ricky Run and then suddenly you become “Bountygate” guy. I don’t want to be that guy.”
Covering any story puts the reporter in a unique position but when the story has larger implications, an intense pressure to perform, often times leads to hasty choices…The rush to be first can override the rush to be accurate…And it’s a lesson young reporters, just starting out can learn from the veteran Ryan…When he was handed his very first “beat”, covering the Boston Celtics at an early age, he jumped into the fire…”I was twenty three when they handed this to me. I was utterly unprepared to cover a basketball team (let alone the Boston Celtics). They don’t teach you, there’s no course, nobody teaches you, you have to figure it out for yourself!”… Seven years later Ryan was still trying to figure it out and it almost cost him his job after a rocky relationship with then Celtics Head Coach Tommy Heinsohn…
Sometimes it’s not enough to know how to cover the big story, you have to stay out of its way…The urge for that “nugget” now, that piece of information that might put you on the map can cost you a relationship , or worse, a reputation later…Ryan had a terrific answer for the students in the class, many of whom will graduate soon and face their first real job, “How do you build trust? You learn the difference between what’s printable and what’s not printable and (maybe) you hold onto it and then float it down a little later. There’s a central balance. How close do you want to get, how close can you get? And you have to balance that off, you don’t know how to protect yourself sometimes.”
It’s a lesson you’ll never learn in the classroom, one I hope we’ve started you thinking about as you go forward…
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December 2, 2012 at 4:48 pm
El Campo, Texas, Wynne, Arkansas, Huntington WV, even Cedar Rapids, IA…small newspapers needing writers, stations looking for sports reporters, local viewers looking for the next Chris Berman or Suzy Kolber…Talk to every anchor, producer, writer and you find a story of humble beginnings, of small towns, long shifts and not so much money…Everyone has a story and each one is usually more fascinating than the next…
Let’s get something out of the way, right up front…your dream job exists!…whether it’s in the aforementioned cities or in White River Junction, Vermont, don’t be deterred from going after it…Sites like TVJobs.com and Medialine.com exist to start the process…these are real jobs in real places….
But these sites are just one of the ways to start the process…Morry Levine , of Comcastsportsnet New England, visited the Boston University Sports Journalism seminar series recently and remembered how he did it the old fashioned way…”Even if you don’t know anyone, cold call areas that you want to be in and say ‘I’m gonna be in the area, can i stop by, can I have two minutes of your time and there are people who are going to give you their time.”
Both Levine and Michael McDermott, Sports Editor of the Providence Journal agree that getting a recommendation for a job is perhaps the most important door opener and that’s where leaving a positive impression during your internship can be key…
And as scary as leaving the college womb can be, understand you have skills that employers need…McDermott put it this way, “You guys come into it with an advantage of knowing that you’re going to have to be flexible. I’m looking for someone who’s competent, passionate but also collaborative as well.” You can do this…Now get out there and let the journey begin…The Atascadero News and (station) KAWE, Bemidji, Minnesota is waiting for your call….
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November 10, 2012 at 3:05 pm
It’s easy to be star struck sometimes as a journalist, no matter what the grizzled veterans of the Fourth Estate say…The first time you’re in an interview situation with the likes of Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, it’s real…I know I was…I hoped i didn’t embarrass myself or worse, draw the dreaded glare!…So when Celtics rookie first round draft pick Jared Sullinger stopped by the Boston University sports journalism seminar series recently, I could tell the students were somewhat in awe…After all, here was a guy who just started the last two games for the Celtics and he was younger than everyone in the room!…
But ya know what, he was as down to earth as they come and in his time with the students, he made sure they knew he was just another regular guy, albeit a multi-millionaire, but a person who likes Twitter, a guy who watches “Storage Wars”, a guy who carries a picture on his phone of the new Ohio State basketball uniforms( he secretly wished he could wear)!
Athletes have always had contentious relationships with the people who cover them…Some more than others … I can tell you one thing though , no matter how long Sullinger stays in the league, he’ll be a media darling…a “go to” guy… Why?…Because he’s up front and he lets you know what he expects from you, “K-Y-P, know your personnel. You gotta know there are certain things you can ask,,,you gotta find a side door to ask it, you can’t just come in the front door.”…which is not to say you can’t ask about key moments in the game, just do it tactfully…
And don’t try and fool an athlete with a comment like “just between you and me”….With so many outlets vying for anything, someone is liable to run with anything said, “Nothing’s off the record, we know that, said Sullinger. There are people where you say something and they’re gonna write that, so you understand that. In a matter of minutes it’s gonna be on the internet.”
Very well spoken for a player who should be a junior in college…Obviously he learned from an early age to keep those antennae up… But those are good lessons for young journalists to learn…Whether you’re working at the high school level ,the college level or the professional level, you need something from them…Know the rules of “engagement” and you’ll get your story…
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November 4, 2012 at 4:35 pm
When twenty five students in a sports journalism class were asked recently whether or not they watched sports coverage on their local news channel, the response was unanimous, not one hand shot skyward…And you know what, it’s not surprising…
It’s not because they come from out of state…It’s not because they don’t follow the “local” teams”…it’s not even because they don’t own a television…It’s because it’s not relevant…And as any sports broadcast student at BU will tell you, “If you don’t advance the story or tell ‘em something they don’t already know”, there’s no reason to watch…Even the prestigious Poynter Institute in Florida has tackled the subject of failing viewers for sports coverage in the last decade…
But it’s very simple…Local stations aren’t doing truly local stories…We’re not breaking ground here but the stations have marginalized sports departments to such a degree lately, people are shutting off in droves…And the cycle goes on…no one is watching, so we won’t possibly consider doing more…
Darren Haynes of WHDH and JP Smollins of WPRI sat in on a sports journalism seminar recently at Boston University and both started in smaller markets where the coverage and the emphasis was on the hometown athletes….And it was a good time for Haynes, who cut his teeth in Alpena, Michigan to tell the students that backwater markets can be good places to learn their craft; “You’re in a small market, so what!…you’re practicing to get to where(Boston) I am now. All those skills, everything you learned together, you see it multiplied by twenty in the City.”
And the smaller markets are also the places viewers rely on local stations for coverage…ESPN isn’t carrying high school football…there’s no cross country coverage on CBS Sports…Yet local stations in professional markets insist on carrying only professional highlights…It’s not working and won’t until someone breaks the mold…
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October 28, 2012 at 7:50 am
It usually starts with some inanimate object…maybe a hair brush, maybe even a wooden kitchen spoon…But invariably, if you ask play by play announcers how they got their start, they will tell you they were the ones running around the living room announcing games for their parents at a very early age…Hey, let’s be honest…who of us hasn’t called our own games even if it’s on the court….”Three seconds to go, he/she dribbles to his left, (raise voice here), he/she shoots, IT’s GOOD, IT’s GOOD!….You can even buy an app and customize your own call!
Play by Play is one of those classic sportscaster dreams…but it’s nowhere as easy at is it seems…Unless, perhaps, you listen to Justin Kutcher of FoxSports or Dave Goucher of the Boston Bruins, who joined us recently at the Boston University sports journalism seminar series….”Just call the game”, said Kutcher. ”forget all the notes, the stats,. the stories, just call the game”…Great advice…some of the classic calls over the decades are simply nothing more than reactions to what’s going on….”Do you believe in miracles?”…”I can’t believe what i just saw!”and as long as the San Francisco Giants are on the brink of their second world series title in three years, the classic Russ Hodges call “The Giants win the pennant!”
Goucher and Kutcher got their starts at WTBU radio and took jobs in small markets that required them to do everything from sales, to media relations, even wearing the mascot uniform…thankfully, for Justin, no videotape exists of those times but he relishes telling the story and considers it part of the learning process….and for every aspiring broadcaster, Kutcher gives another piece of advice, “Record everything you do. Not only will you need it for your resume reel but it’s a great way to critique yourself and see if you’re getting any better.”
“Be yourself”, intones Goucher. Don’t try to be something, someone you’re not”…The Bruins long time radio play by play admits to thinking about what he’d say when the team was on the brink of winning the Stanley Cup in 2011. But in the end, for the most part, he painted the picture to tell the story…
Play by play is the glamour job in the industry, no question…but it takes hours of practice and a lucky break here and there…too many put themselves ahead of the game itself and wind up on websites like Awful Announcing or The Bleacher Report…Just call the game baby, just call the game….
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October 21, 2012 at 9:46 am
It should be as simple as just changing the channel or, heaven forbid, turning off the program, but we have come to depend on sports media critics, as much for advance warning , as solid post game analysis as well…I suppose we all like to have our opinions validated and can’t wait for a “review” that generally agrees with our own…But is there a value to having a sports media column?
Jack Craig started the first column locally and parlayed it into a national column in the Sporting News, reaching millions in the process…Not surprisingly we now have Twitter critics, perhaps the prototypical “bloggers in the basement”…As a viewer, it’s your job is to differentiate between those choices…Ken Fang has been following and writing about the sports media scene since 2005 and if you’ll forgive the reference, “he built it and they came”…What started as an outlet for his opinion has now grown to, by his own count, some 2.5 million unique visitors…But Ken takes a different approach unlike some of his more celebrated brethren. ”They just seem to hate everybody. They just seem to want to pound and say that nothing is right with sports television. I’ll give credit. I don’t want to say ‘get of my lawn’ which a lot of writers can’t seem to accept these days”…
Fang joined Chad Finn of the Boston Globe recently at a Boston University sports journalism seminar and as the latest in a line of successors on Morrissey Boulevard, Finn’s approach is based, first and foremost, in a fundamental journal principle. ”The checks and balances of anything are important. If you’re dealing with people who try to take advantage of a situation, who aren’t honest about their intentions and its effects, you need to be the person when something isn’t being done right, or is being done disingenuously, you’re the one who let’s people know about that”…
Yet, the critic is just one voice and it’s important to remember that…Well, maybe you can’t quite convince NBC Sports or Twitter of that…Witness the case of one Guy Adams, who summarily felt the network’s wrath after taking them to task on their Olympic coverage… Adams is a freelancer…Grantland , on the other hand, is a website that boasts deep pockets and Bill Simmons, among other notable contributors…When Bryan Curtis wrote virtually the same column, you didn’t hear a (spoken) word….
Like anything else, sports media criticism exists in many forms…and i guess that’s the point…follow Bruce Allen, follow Chad Finn, follow Ken Fang…It’s another opinion but it’s one that’s put forth with experience and research and thought….They aren’t the most popular members of the media community , the people they write about can be very thin skinned, but the ones that have done it for a while, do it well and take pride in what they do…
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October 14, 2012 at 9:07 am
If sports talk radio listeners paid heed to the 1958 song by the Coasters, it might have never mushroomed into what it is today….A place to go while you’re in your car, a haven for long suffering fans, even somewhere to catch up on a missed interview on your radio DVR (is there even such a term?)…
But talk radio, and sports in particular, has exploded in the last ten years and whether you like it or not, to quote Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” (if you should wade through that video, keep in mind, while it was recorded in 1977, McLuhan’s book actually came out in 1964…It’s as authentic today as it did almost a half century ago)…Three years ago Boston had one all sports station…soon we’ll have three…An Inside Radio survey, released earlier this year, says eighty six percent of listeners are men… Ryan Johnston of 98.5 The Sports Hub claims many are unhappy; ”Boston is pretty damn miserable, there’s a kinship that comes from that. We all kind of suffer through the same thing. They wanna gripe and they want to hear other people gripe. They want to know they’re not alone in the their misery”…Rick Pitino lives!
Johnston joined Amy Lawrence of ESPN Radio at the latest edition of the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series and the differences between a local show and a national one such as Amy’s were obvious….”When it’s slow, Johnston said, you feel like you’re just beating the same topics into the ground. You hope the audience doesn’t feel that way (though)”…Lawrence was quick to point out that her guideline for topics might be a bit narrower, especially a subject like politics; ”We’re trying to appeal and bring in as many people as possible and inevitably you will alienate half of your audience whether it’s intentional or not is a different story”…
ESPN currently has more than four hundred and seventy affiliates nationwide so they must be doing something right…In fact, that same Inside Radio survey says sports talk radio stations have increased by some sixty seven percent in the last ten years, jumping from just over 400 to near 700…That growth spurt has attracted financial investors and if for no other reason, sports talk radio is alive and well…
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October 7, 2012 at 8:38 am
How timely was it that the Boston Red Sox fired Bobby Valentine on the very same day the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series focused on Media Relations?….In case you missed it, the Sox decided to hold “group” interviews with their media outlets rather than a full blown news conference to announce the firing….NESN, MLB.com and WEEI were given first crack since they are rights holders with the local newspapers and television network affiliates left to scramble… There was much hand wringing in newsrooms all across town but the subtle implication here might just be that the team did not want this to turn into a “live” circus and purposely chose this method…undoubtedly, many of the outlets would have carried the newser live and millions of fans would have had access, not to mention national outlets, like ESPN and FoxSports, who might have piggy backed off a local feed….
It was the job of the Media Relations department to come up with that strategy and while the people covering the team weren’t happy, the approach worked perfectly…..basically, control the message….
There’s no question fans want to know everything about the team and while it’s always the job to build that base, media relations people, just like reporters who follow the team on a regular basis, just can’t and don’t report everything…Some stories would be embarrassing to the team, think chicken and beer here, but legitimately there are times the P.R. people just don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain…”It’s not like everyone in the organization knows everything and we’re not putting it out there, says Christy Berkery, the Social Media Manager of the New England Patriots…”A lot of it just exists within a really small corner of people”…
Which makes it all the more important to build a connection with these people….The flow of information pipe is small enough without you making any enemies…Dave Scott is now the Director of News Content for ESPN after stints in the media relations departments at UMass Amherst and the University of Kentucky…He spends much of his day putting out fires as well as generating good press for the Worldwide Leader…But Dave had some valuable words for our students, “You’re always building relationships especially with P.R. people and you have to build a trust. There’s gonna be bad stories, we understand that. If you burn us on that story, it’s very unlikely we’re going to help you with that next story and that’s going to make your job harder”…
Which is not to say you don’t investigate, don’t report and don’t question but at the end of the day you have to remember, you need these people…And making your job harder is not what it’s all about….
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September 30, 2012 at 10:37 am
The 1968 slogan for a popular cigarette might very well be relevant now but if you were lucky enough to be on hand for our Women in Sports seminar at Boston University you might just wonder…Digit Murphy, the long time head women’s ice hockey coach at Brown University was quick to point out that despite celebrating the forty year anniversary of Title IX, things are not necessarily better, if only in numbers…”There are fewer women coaches now than there were ten years ago, Murphy stated, and that’s a problem” …In fact , according to a New York Times article, the numbers are staggering…Title IX has brought about sweeping changes for women in sports…One need look no further than right here on the Boston University campus to see its effect…After ninety one years, Terrier football was dropped in 1997, many of the funds diverted to pay for women’s sports on campus…Many of those funds went for women’s scholarships and the women’s athletic program on this end of Commonwealth Avenue is thriving…
Alice Cook was a pioneer in Boston sports television , joining WBZ-TV in 1984, as first a producer and then a reporter…While she loved the stories and wouldn’t have traded it for anything, acceptance was an issue…”I had athletes question everything about me, why i was there.I felt like I had to work harder than everyone else and couldn’t make a mistake”….Well, she outlived all of the detractors and went on to mentor many upcoming women sports journalists…Yet interestingly, like the female hockey coaches, the numbers of women on air at the networks affiliates here in Boston has evaporated…So where’s the progress?
Amanda Braun has been in the position of hiring women coaches and administrators at three major universities including her current post at Northeastern…She remembers being asked to join a conversation when the Huskies needed a new coach for their men’s team…”Dawn Staley’s name was brought into the conversation and i was surprised. Iwondered how that would be received”…The Huskies went on to hire Bill Coen and there has yet to be a woman coaching Division one men, although there are a couple of assistants sprinkled in…
Progress, sure…Are we there yet?, no way….Murphy gave perhaps the best piece of advice for men working alongside women in the sports world, journalism, athletics or anywhere, for that matter…”Treat them as your peers. Treat them with respect”…
Good avice for future journalists, men and women…After all, some day you might just wind up the General Manager and Coach of a professional women’s hocky team , the President and Founder of your own website or the Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director of a major university…You Have come a long way…..
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September 23, 2012 at 8:40 am
Fancy hotels, daily access to the locker room, a press pass to all the games…What could be bad?….
Beat reporting is sometimes all of those but more often than not it’s a twenty four a day job and can be daunting at times…Depending on the beat you are lucky enough to secure and in what city, you might struggle for access or you might get lucky and cover hockey!……Such is the case with the latest guests to the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series….Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe previously worked in Milwaukee and Miami covering the NFL before coming to Boston two years ago….Like any new reporter in town, he had to tread lightly and prove himself to the athletes and people he was covering…To his credit , Bedard faced the challenge head on…”I told Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, I’m not here to make my name off of you. I’m here to be fair and accurate about what goes on with this team and anything you can do to help me do that, I would be appreciative of that”…Bedard now enjoys a healthy respect among his peers and the team…For students wondering how they are going to handle being immersed into a new situation(read, first job), Bedard’s advice is key…
But beat reporters can’t expect to just travel in their own little circle…Being able to translate your skills across the board will undoubtedly help you down the line…Fluto Shinzawa joined Bedard in the discussion and a look at his his resume is eye opening…Starting at the Boston University Daily Free Press , Shinzawa covered the men’s hockey team, perennial powers in college play…And although it was his first love, Shinzawa knew he’d have to expand his horizons…Upon taking a job at the Concord (NH) Monitor, he discovered the world of NASCAR, as far removed from hockey as you can get…”It was a great opportunity for me to work on something on a grander scale than Friday night football and high school sports. And it gave me an advantage when i went to look for a job at the Boston Globe. There’s not that many people with knowledge of motor sports. He (the Globe sports Editor) needed someone to help out and it was one of the best career decisions I ever made.”
Having inside information, knowing when to use it and the glamour of travelling with a team are all perks of job but it only comes after laying the foundation…New t owns, new jobs can throw you a curve but if you’re prepared, you’ll figure it out…Next Week: Women in Sports….
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