The boss bellows, “I need someone to cover the (insert game here), who wants to do it?.” What’s the first thing that goes through your mind?…You probably could come up with a lot of answers but the most important ought to be telling the story better than everyone else…
It might be easier for you if you don’t cover the team every day but the fact remains, use that J school training, tell em something they don’t already know…Try and find the nuggets no one else has, don’t be a member of the pack and “go along to get along”…
Beat reporting seems like the greatest job in the world..You get to go to all the practices, you travel with the team, maybe even some multi-million dollar athlete will say hi to you and use your name!…But in order to keep that job and stand out, you have to consistently be different from the other twenty five “regulars” in the room…
“That’s the $64,000 question”, Mike Muldoon of the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, told the Boston University Sports Journalism Series…”Make sure you’re not writing what everybody else is. It’s a challenge. There’s a lot of similarity.”…The last thing you want is to write the same story that your competitors did, not at least, on a regular basis…Making those relationships that you can later turn into information is the key….Don’t exclude anyone who’s around the team, you just never know…And how much does it hurt to say “good morning” to the security people, the “Bull Gang” or the P.R. staff… It will pay dividends later…
Which is not to say that every story you get told is “the one”…part of your job is to decide which one(s) to run with…”There’s a ga-zillion stories almost every night…a lot of times it comes down to prioritizing what comes down to the best story”, says Sherrod Blakely of ComcastSportsNet New England. ..Blakely broke a number of big stories when he was in Detroit but still talks about the one that got away because he’d never used that particular source before…
Make things happen for yourself…The next time the boss needs a game covered he/she will call you first because you stood out in a crowd
18 Comments
Matt Goisman posted on September 27, 2010 at 3:24 pm
What both Blakely and Muldoon described Wednesday is a “balancing act” when it comes to beat reporting. When Blakely talked about “prioritizing” stories, his example was a Paul Pierce injury vs. a Brian Scalabrine injury. I asked him after the conversation if there are some stories so important that they HAVE to be covered, and Blakely said yes. But, he cautioned, there is still a fair amount of creativity available in HOW you tell the story, even if it everyone is telling the same thing. In his example, Pierce’s injury would take precedence, but you could talk about what his replacement did with the added playing time).
I came across a similar issue with a game story written about the Pats-Jets game last Sunday for another class. In his press conference, Brady said “we sucked,” and I didn’t use it, in part because I figured everyone else would. The teacher liked the idea of using different quotes, but that quote was so succinct, so pithy, so out-of-character for the QB, and so accurate, that it had to be used.
I think that’s the key to great beat reporting, what Blakely and Muldoon were trying to tell us Wednesday. Some things HAVE to be told no matter what. But if you just tell the basic facts, your writing will be boring. Sports reporting gives greater freedom of storytelling than hard-news writing does. It’s the extra leg work put in, the unheard-from source, the background research, and the craft of word-choice, that makes a beat writer stand out.
Molly posted on September 27, 2010 at 8:06 pm
“Do what you love, and love what you do.” As cliché as the saying might be, I believe it applies to all of us. After Wednesday’s class, I started to think about the message behind what both Blakely and Muldoon were saying. Yes, journalists are on-call 24 hours, 7 days a week. Vacation time is slim, and they both agreed it is hard to not work and relax.
Blakely’s story was pretty inspiring: to go from recording high school scores, working for the local newspaper in his hometown of Syracuse, NY to covering Donovan McNabb’s first collegiate game in North Carolina solo. I think it’s important for us all to remember, like Professor Shorr has said, to make things happen for ourselves. Blakely did just that, and has had the opportunity to cover some great teams. Muldoon started out a little differently, but managed to work his way up the ladder. Again, putting in the extra time and volunteering to cover a story when your editor needs a reporter sometimes makes all the difference.
Just as Matt said, both Blakely and Muldoon made the point that some stories have to be broken. And part of being a reporter is being able to stand behind what you write, and not shy away after calling someone out after they played poorly. While it is hard to be on the top of your game all the time as a beat writer, it’s the competition between journalists and our individual desire to stand out that drives us to be the best.
Jacob Safane posted on September 27, 2010 at 9:17 pm
The key to being a good beat reporter is to write compelling stories day in and day out that breaks the monotony of a long season and stands out from the all the other reporters.
In Mike Gleason’s article on Belichick and access, he explains that there’s less of a need today for standard reporting because teams and players can release information themselves, so access is less important. He adds, “Stories will focus less on what happened than why a certain thing happened.” This ties in to Blakely and Muldoon’s points on writing stories that focus on the meaning behind the event, and not just a recap. By changing this model, beat reporters can still be relevant.
Muldoon gave the example of talking to Glen Davis rather than Rasheed Wallace, because Davis consistently gives good material for stories, which helps a reporter far more than Wallace’s Belichik-esque grunts and nods. Last week’s guest Jeff Howe also explained how he can find great stories by talking to lesser-known players while a crowd forms around Tom Brady. So the lesson is to avoid the obvious and dig a little deeper for compelling stories.
Aside from standing out in story ideas, it’s also crucial to pay attention to detail. It’s easy for us as students to want to move up fast and get frustrated with small assignments at WTBU or the Freep or our internships, but Blakely was proof that anyone can move up the ladder (even if they start as an agate clerk) by doing a killer job on every task, no matter the size.
Emily posted on September 28, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Beat reporting seems to be a lot like playing a competitive sport. Just like the athletes are out on the court or on the field giving it their all and knocking down their opponents, beat reporters are doing the same thing-just inside the locker room.
That being said, while covering a sports team may be as cutthroat as playing a professional sport, journalists still have a job to do. Journalists may not be stealing the ball, or passing balls into the end zone, but they are shooting three’s in their own right.
Journalists are required to get the story and advance it. They have to find the varying angles without mouthing off to the ref’s and maybe without talking to the best player. Beat writing requires a lot of confidence, especially when you are walking into locker rooms and as Muldoon stated, “standing nose to nose with KG.”
Blakely and Muldoon may disagree when it comes to the level of confidence that one must have to be successful but they agree on this: you need to pay your dues. Kick butt and do a good job at the job you are asked to do, it will only prepare you for the one day when you are called upon.
I especially liked how humble both Blakely and Muldoon seemed to be. They both stressed paying your dues, and not taking your stories for granted. Muldoon said that he was “much more critical about myself than any one can be of me,” which is an important attribute needed to be a successful beat reporter. However, like Blakely said, “If you want to compete and you are a true competitor, you can be a beat writer.”
Tristan Hobbes posted on September 29, 2010 at 7:44 am
There has been a common theme the past two weeks; confidence. Jackie Pepper talked about having it when you take your first job and Sherrod Blakely and Mike Muldoon stressed the importance of it when you step into the locker room as a beat reporter for the first time.
I’ve always learned and said that you have to act like you belong there. That pertains to anything; a fancy dinner, trying to sneak down to better seats at a game or, in this case, interviewing a multi-million dollar athlete. The athletes understand the media has a job to do and that they must answer tough questions at times. And again, that first impression is everything and if you become known as the timid reporter from Oriskany, then you’ve lost a bit of credibility.
But I also think this series brought more great insights. One being the importance of talking to EVERYONE. That means the garbage guys, the security, the locker room attendants and maybe even the janitor. You never know when they will help you out with some important information, you just have to make sure you can trust their information. This is so important because of the competition that takes place. The “adrenaline rush” as Sherrod said. You have to want to get the story first, get it right and possibly break something even bigger in the process.
I wish I could say it better than Emily but I cant. She described the competitive element between beat reporters perfectly.
It also helps that I have had the chance to experience some of these things. I have been the beat reporter for the BU women’s soccer team the past two years and the BU men’s hockey team last year. I have felt the pressure of asking a tough question, the fear of asking a dumb question and even the rejection after asking an already asked question.
Being an ultra-competitive person is in my blood and this job needs that. It’s a never-ending battle between all the reporters and a never-ending battle with your personal and social life. It’s no easy job.
Adam Silvers posted on September 29, 2010 at 11:39 am
I think Emily and others are right on the money with the idea that beat reporting is a lot like playing the very sport you cover. If you cover a team like the Sox you will go to 162 games and by the end I imagine you would feel the same wear and tear the players do when September rolls around.
So why do it?
Simply put, you do it because you love it, you have to. This is not a 9 to 5 job, as we have learned over the past few weeks. Its all about how motivated you are to be the last one in the locker room, and the first one into the office the next day. Muldoon mentioned that in order to really succeed in the business, you can’t be a “clock watcher,” you have to be willing to work at all hours because that’s a sports journalists lively-hood.
Sherrod described his altercation with Corliss Williams after a piece he wrote on the Pistons shotty performance. This story stuck with me because of the way Sherrod handled himself. Here we have a beat writer who knows he spends most of his time covering the same team and seeing the same faces, yet he didn’t have a problem calling out the Pistons performance. Blakely didn’t have a problem because he was writing the truth and he told Corliss Williams the truth to his face. I learned that as close as you get to these guys in the locker room, you still have a duty to your readers to tell it like it is. This takes courage and I can see why Blakely is skyrocketing to the top of the class in Boston sports beat reporting.
Its called accountability and taking responsibility for what you write, something I’m glad to see, is not losing its importance in sports journalism.
Lia Poin posted on September 29, 2010 at 11:51 am
Beat reporting, like Emily and Tristan said, is definitely one of the more competitive sides of sports journalism. Most journalists need to be competitive, but beat reporters have to “beat” out the others on a daily basis; they must have the more interesting stories coming out before all the other ones.
I think it was important for us to learn that, in order
to tell the story that no one else has, you really need to develop sources and use them wisely. You have to have your eyes open and your mind working at ALL TIMES. Sherrod said that basically, not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about the Celtics and what is happening with the team, even on his days off. This is what a beat reporter has to be….perceptive and aware at all times. If they aren’t tuned in to the Celtics for a day, things happen without them. The Celtics keep moving even when the beat reporters are on vacation.
I agree with Tristan when he says that you really have to use everyone you can, from janitors to building personnel. You have to be smart from Day 1 and you have to make an impression on everyone – the players, the coaches, the janitors AND your boss. I read an article about Nayoko Funayama, then a reporter for WMUR, at Dice-K’s first press conference in America. She is fluent in Japanese and asked a question in Dice-K’s native language. Now, I’m not advocating that we all go out and learn Finnish in order to speak to Tuukka Rask, but imagine the impression she made on everyone in the room, especially Dice-K. We need to think in this mindset – how can I stand out in the crowd?
But an also important note on sources – we need to be careful with them. I liked that Sherrod has his priorities straight and it seemed like he cared more about getting a story right rather than just breaking news just to be the first with it. He could have broken the story that Rasheed Wallace was going to retire simply based on a text message from a source he had never used before. That would have been a huge story for him. However, he wasn’t 100% sure of the source, and especially in this day and age, it’s refreshing to hear of someone who had a piece of information like that and DIDN’T immediately put it on Twitter or write a story about it because they didn’t absolutely trust the source. It is important to make sources wherever you can as a beat writer, but you really have to be careful and use your head when using those random sources. Sometimes they are a godsend but othertimes you just don’t know if you can trust them.
I think that being competitive in terms of covering teams, telling people something they already don’t know and impressing your boss is so key to beat reporting and reporting in general. But even though you have to be competitive and quick to break stories, you still have to be credible, especially as a beat writer. Your name is linked to that team, and you’ll have an entire locker room full of angry people to show up to the next day if you use your sources incorrectly.
Jack Flagler posted on September 29, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Tristan mentioned that the theme of confidence has come up in almost every seminar this year – and in many of our journalism classes before. Similarly, it seems that every writer who has spoken to us has stressed the importance of work ethic.
Mike Muldoon and Sherrod Blakely hammered this point home. If you’re going to be a beat reporter you need to take the small stories and nail every one of them. And when your break finally comes to cover a big story, you need to reward the boss’s trust in you.
For Sherrod, that one break led to another job in North Carolina. His experience shows that if you mail it in for even one story, you might miss out on an opportunity.
Not to overuse the sports metaphor, but a journalist showing up and producing good copy every day is as important as an athlete playing with focus and energy every time he or she steps onto the field. It doesn’t matter if you’re taking down box scores for a high-school basketball game in Syracuse or playing garbage time in a blowout against Montana State. Perform your best, and the chances will come.
Francis posted on September 29, 2010 at 7:42 pm
As many others have posted, it was great to hear Muldoon and Blakeley talk about having confidence and the competitive nature of beat reporting. I only wish I had heard this earlier.
Two summers ago I interned at a newspaper in my hometown and was asked to cover the city council meetings each week. When I attended my first meeting, I was nervous and hesitant to talk to many of the people there. As the weeks on and I continued to attend meetings, reporting became a lot easier as I became comfortable talking to the councilors. They began to recognize me and would sometimes come up to talk to me before I could get to them.
I also looked at each meeting as a competition as there were three of us there to report on the meeting for our respective publications. I would try to talk to the councilors who were active during the meeting before the other two could get to them as well as try to get more information out of them. I was at a disadvantage because my publication was a weekly one while the other two were daily, but I still tried to get the story first. I think the competition helped me become a better reporter because I was trying to get different views on stories.
Muldoon and Blakeley also mentioned interviews and sources. Some people are better interviews than others and may become some of your better sources. While I covered the council meetings, I began to notice that the younger councilors and those who were seeking re-election that fall were more willing to talk to reporters than the older ones or those who were running unopposed.
Those that I often talked to quickly became my best sources. I saw a councilor at an event in the city and he told me some information that otherwise I would have had to wait until the next meeting to hear about. Another time, a councilor called me at night to tell me that he was not going to seek re-election for his councilor-at-large spot but was rather going to run for a different position.
Now I’m not sure if I stood out from the other two reporters who covered the meetings, but I feel that I did become a better reporter because of these things.
Jillian posted on September 29, 2010 at 9:46 pm
It’s kind of crazy when you think about the way beat reporting has changed over the years with the increase in technology. It used to be that people did need to see the box scores and read the game stories in the newspaper if they missed the game being televised, or wanted information on teams other than their hometown. But nowadays there is SportsCenter, DVR, internet and smart phones. Even if you’re not in front of a TV you can follow a game practically play-by-play on twitter or a live blog. This realization that people don’t really need to read the play-by-play or game story after the fact, made one of the things Blakely said really stand out to me. He said “don’t write what happened, write what it means.” I think that statement is a great companion to professor Shorr’s advice on “advancing the story” and “telling them something they don’t already know.”
Like our classmate Matt said, sports reporting gives a journalist a greater freedom in writing than news reporting does. Any viewer can see that an athlete has been struggling on the court, but they don’t get the opportunity to go in to the locker room, talk to the athlete, and find out what’s been going on. As a beat reporter, it is your job to find out this kind of information for the audience. You are the one embedded with the team, and fans want to know what’s going on with the players, especially outside of just game performance. Often times you don’t go in to a sporting event with a pre-planned story, but rather you watch and learn throughout the game what the headlines may be. Both Blakely and Muldoon stressed that the way to learn this kind of reporting and way to gather information is by being confident, asking the tough questions, and cultivating sources you can trust.
The other theory that has seemed to stand out to a lot of the class from this seminar is the competitive aspect of sports reporting. We’ve heard in each of our discussions this semester that it is up to us to make things happen. We need to step up, be aggressive and put ourselves out there for any and all assignments we can. Like Blakely said, we need to “look at any and every assignment as one we are going to dominate.” If we impress our editors on the little things, it will lead to more opportunities for big things down the road. In order to accomplish this we have to, like Muldoon mentioned, be our own worst critics. We should only be doing work that we are proud to put our name on and stand behind. Something to remember, especially when it comes down to beat reporting, is that people rarely remember the mediocre, it’s the extremes that stand out – and that can mean extremely great or also extremely terrible.
Joel Senick posted on September 29, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Beat reporting may be one of the most demanding jobs in all of journalism. On the clock 24/7 with no real “off-days”, beat reporters are forced to continually come up with new content in an effort to be fresh and informative. As Sherrod said, even when he was in the process of moving his family, his beat was still consuming his thoughts. They must be able to ask the tough question, but still maintain a healthy relationship with the players and coaches they spend the entire season with. The demands go on and on.
According to our two guests, it seemed like the key thing to do as a beat writer was to not burn any bridges. Like comments before me have said, talk to the janitor, security guard, etc. and you never know what you will be able to dig up in the future. Also, it makes sense that the more solid sources you have, the easier this very demanding job will be for you. Like Emily said, beat writing is like a competitive sport and the more people you have in your “corner” the better chance you have of coming out with a story above the rest.
One thing that stuck with me was Professor Shorr’s reference to the previous nights Red Sox game and how if you’re in the sports journalism field long enough, your passion as a fan starts to fade. This made me think of my uncle, who was a sports writer from the 80’s up until a few years ago. I talked to him recently and he told me that he doesn’t even watch sports anymore. Since beat reporting (and sports journalism in general) is such a consuming profession, I believe you really need to think hard about if you want your passion or hobby, to become your daily job. It’s one of the reasons why I started to reconsider if I really wanted to enter into the world of sports journalism.
Angus Dunk posted on September 29, 2010 at 11:51 pm
I think the fact that our class was able to hear from two sports beat reporters at the professional level was key because they really represent the heart and soul of sports journalism. They do what they do because they don’t just like what team and sport they cover, they love it! Beat reporters are often the most experienced and most knowledgeable of those in the sports media today. One could dare to say they’re as good if not better than the sports broadcasters that see the team on a daily basis as well. The beat reporters aren’t just there while the game is happening, but also present during all team events because it’s their job to get the latest and greatest information on their subject.
From personal experience, I have seen the demands of being a beat reporter, once for the men’s basketball team (2009-2010) and this year for the women’s soccer team. Despite the pressures, there is a benefit of being a beat reporter, which is the fact that you’re the expert and if you do your job well it’s going to be hard for someone to topple your information, stories, and overall knowledge. During my experience with the sports department at WTBU, I’ve seen this firsthand because in numerous situations. For example, I’ve often felt more prepared to cover a game one day than the assigned broadcasters. It’s a tiring and demanding job, (especially when you’re balancing the workload against that of your classes), but the job opens many gates for you. For example, I remember before beat reporting, I had never been filmed before for post game interviews or online WTBU sports updates, all of which would go up online. Another benefit is that one gets to meet new people and establish connections within the sports world that one might not develop otherwise.
That said though, beat reporting isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. In addition to the 24/7 workload, it takes a lot of guts and persistence. For example, I liked Sherrod Blakely’s point about post-game press conferences, “You have to act like you belong there.” This was important to me because I remember during my coverage of the men’s basketball team last year it wasn’t easy to do this. Game in and game out, I’d have to go to each post game conference in a room full of professional journalists, who had more experience and training than me, and ask questions to a hardnosed coach and some, tall and slightly intimidating players. I gradually got better at asking questions on a game by game basis, but it was never easy with these factors considered.
Building on Blakely’s point, it’s important to have a lot of confidence in yourself, or to develop a strong sense of it. Mike Muldoon of The Eagle Tribune pointed out, “You need to have a backbone, don’t be a wimp.” This is good inspiration to get in a classroom now in my opinion because once you’re out in the real world you don’t have anyone to motivate you, but yourself.
On a side subject I found both Blakely and Muldoon’s points on sources to be interesting. Muldoon pointed out rightly that you should get to know the staff for a sports event as well as you can because they can provide you with information and access to certain things that might not be readily available elsewhere. However, I think Muldoon may have overlooked the problem with this. You have to forge a close enough relationship with someone at this level for them to do these things for you. You can’t just do a little, light chit chat and then ask a bunch of questions and expect answers. Most people will still give you the information and details you’re looking for, but you have to make sure they don’t feel “used” or “betrayed” by you. A lot of people are aware when someone tries to do this to him or her and one has to be sensitive to this. That said, one must establish a reasonably close friendship with such a person to do these things on a consistent basis and in return go the extra mile for him or her (i.e. get them tickets to a game, buy him or her and their family dinner, or go out for beers with them).
Another good point on sources I enjoyed hearing about came from Sherrod. As Lia has already mentioned, Sherrod received some information about Rasheed Wallace’s supposed retirement plans and could have taken the lead on the story, but didn’t. He received it via text message and wasn’t entirely positive if the source was trustworthy, so he didn’t go with it. The information turned out to be correct, but I admire that Sherrod followed journalism 101 and didn’t write a story based on information that could have been speculative or simply wrong. As he said, “You’re not going to write every single story.”
I think as class we took away from this seminar (as Emily alluded to her in quote) that the journalism career we go into has to be one that we love, obsess over, get excited for, and flat at know 110%. While I have enjoyed working on the men’s basketball and women’s soccer beats here at BU, I don’t think I loved either enough to be a full-time soccer or basketball beat. That’s why whatever element of journalism I go into (broadcast, print, online, or TV), I know I want it to be hockey related because it’s the sport I know and love. I’ve been watching hockey since I was about 7 years old, playing it for a little while now, and flat out just understand the game. I can’t picture myself covering something different than this game alone because of how excited it makes me. Passion and drive are the biggest factors in making one satisfied as a broadcaster and journalist.
Brad Kasnet posted on September 30, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Beat reporting is in many ways the bread and butter of sports journalism and the perspectives that Sherrod Blakely and Mike Muldoon shared with us showed that there is no simple formula for success.
Building relationships is an important part of the job, but that’s a process that can take years and will vary depending on the team being covered and the reporter’s personality and style. Finding a story no one else does is an art as well. A reporter does not typically have the luxury of reading all their competitor’s stories before deciding what to report on themselves.
It’s nuances like these that led both Blakely and Muldoon to reference the importance of paying your dues and gaining experience as a beat reporter. Last week, Jackie Pepper said that at some point, TV is TV. She was able to go from her first job in Idaho to a cable gig in Boston in a year. I suspect that beat reporters don’t feel the same way. It takes time to get to know the team you’re covering, cultivate sources and learn how to read between the lines of an athlete’s or coach’s comments. Despite the monotony of a beat, every day brings a new challenge of finding a new story.
Beat reporting is changing. Game stories are bordering on obsolete so the job of the beat reporter is now to delve deeper and bring a new level of understanding to the fans. Blakely and Muldoon both stressed that experience and confidence is the best preparation.
Katie posted on September 30, 2010 at 1:09 pm
As Tristan mentioned, a huge part of beat reporting, especially when first starting out, is simply to act like you belong. Everyone’s going to know if you’re nervous and shy, and it’s your responsibility as the reporter to ask the right questions and to get the athletes to pay attention to you. Building relationships with the players is probably the most necessary element to beat reporting. Yes, you need to know how the game is played and the terminology, but if you can’t get the big names to talk to you, your stories are going to suffer. Like Brad said above, it takes time to build those relationships. It takes a while to figure out which players to use for certain stories, which stories are going to be bigger than others, or how to use each player or coach’s quotes.
But as Sherrod said, it’s not just the relationships with the teams that are important. I really enjoyed the story he told about how when it came time to breaking stories, there were certain people who worked near the team and had inside details that he knew he could trust–but who also knew that they could trust him. Lia pointed out that it was refreshing to see a reporter who had enough integrity to wait and check facts before breaking a story that might not be accurate. Sherrod valued his “insiders” enough not to use someone else’s information that he wasn’t 100 percent positive was true.
Back to actually writing a beat, though, it was nice to hear from Sherrod and Mike about the challenges of writing something different from everyone else. There’s only so many different ways you can write a game recap, but they both mentioned that it’s all about the details. Find something unique about what happened or what someone said and spin your story in that direction, so that’s it’s not going to be the same as all of the other beat writers in the locker room. I guess that would also apply to the off season or when there’s not a lot going on with a team–look for something out of the ordinary and focus on that. It keeps you from writing the same thing as everyone else as well as the same thing every week. Because if you’re with a team for years as many seasoned beat reporters are, it would be way too easy to get caught up in monotony.
Seth posted on September 30, 2010 at 3:20 pm
While I agree with the point that bringing confidence to the workplace is very important; the theme of accountability hit closer to home for me last Thursday. Sherrod Blakely’s encounter with Corliss Williamson illustrated what it is like to be a beat reporter in the real world. The fact that Blakely always shows up and is willing to discuss stories, but more importantly, will not back down when he thinks he has a point gives me confidence. A lot of these athletes are bigger, tougher and stronger than anyone we interact with in everyday life. While it takes guts to stand up to them, its part of the job, and Blakely’s actions gave me confidence to do the same.
Accountability is also necessary when you’re talking about getting the big stories and interactions with your editor. If your competitor gets the scoop then your editor is going to come to you and ask you why you did not get it. But in this new age of internet journalism as Jillian pointed out it should be easier for beat reporters to please their editors. With game recaps becoming redundant as both Mike Muldoon and Blakely said it makes sidebars and columns even more valuable. While newspapers and on-air outlets only have limited space for beat reporters to express their thoughts the internet gives them a near infinite amount of space. Instead of being constricted by space you’re only real limit is time and access to information. You can write not only the necessary big stories but also the different angles and stories you think are important. A perfect example is when Kirk Minihane wrote a piece on the Patriots longsnapper for WEEI.com. While Minihane could never get away with that as a traditional print beat reporter, he and others like him can pull it off in this current day and age (note: I know he’s not a beat reporter). I have served as the beat reporter for the BU Mens Basketball team for the past two seasons and love that freedom. When I have the time, I will write two or even three pieces, in order to match my competition and then write what I think is important.
The last thing that really interested me was when Blakely and Muldoon talked about sources. While I’ve had some experience with working with sources over and over again, the majority of my work in the field is with one-time sources. Thus I had never really thought about using the janitor or talking to security guys to secure information. Even more importantly, I know that the first time I walk into a professional locker room as a beat reporter my number one target doesn’t have to be the superstar right away. While we all want to hear what Kevin Garnett or Rasheed Wallace have to say, Brian Scalabrine knows just as much and may be willing to give you much more information. Overall this was a fantastic seminar and I hope I can use some of these tools going into my last year as a beat in college and in future jobs.
Ben posted on September 30, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Jillian mentioned what I thought was the quote of the seminar. “don’t write what happened, write what it means.” Anyone can describe a game (I admit some definitely do it better than others). I can watch highlights on sports center for a minute and can tell what happened in a game. In some sports I can simply look at a box score for 20 seconds and get a rough sense of the game. If I’m sitting down for ten minutes to read a story about a team, I want some kind of incite that I can’t get elsewhere.
A few other things definitely stuck out. As Tristan and others have mentioned, the need to feel confident when you’re on a beat. I’m sure when we first start we’ll all just want to sit back and be wallflowers when we start. Sit back and let other people ask the questions you want to ask, and piece together what you can from there. Fact is, we’ll never make an impact and distinguish ourselves if we’re afraid to even try. I said last week we’ll need to step outside our comfort zone if we want to succeed. The same holds true here. We might not be comfortable right off the bat asking questions of players we’ve only ever seen on tv, but we need to if we’re going to ever get anyway.
A few people have mentioned sources, one of the key points of the seminar was that some of the best sources will be janitors, security guards. Its great to create a good relationship with players and coaches, and it will probably help with plenty of stories. But take a look at the Red Sox roster from years ago, compare it with now. How many of those players are still around. The Pats last won the super bowl in 2004, how of the guys from that team are still around? Brady? Faulk? Anyone else? Its good to have a friendly relationship with players, but you should players are never around for very long, and you can never predict who is going to be staying and going. How many Bruins beat writers tried to establish a good relationship with Phil Kessel when he first came up thinking he would be a building block of the team. How’d that work out? I’m not saying its not good to get to know players, but if your going to spend months and years building a relationship with anyone, it should be someone who can help you your how career. While 40 people are crowded around Tom Brady to hear what he has to say on Wednesday afternoon, maybe take some time to talk with someone no ones ever noticed before. They’ll definitely remember talking to you more than Brady will.
Other than that, there seemed to be a basic message throughout which emphasized doing things your own way, learning as you go. Both guys worked their way up, and learned a process that worked for them as they went.
Laura posted on September 30, 2010 at 3:48 pm
The aggressive nature of the sports journalism world, as Jillian pointed out, is the most important aspect to note if you want to get ahead in this business. Muldoon and Blakely both made it clear that the job of a beat reporter is challenging. They also reiterated what Pepper and Minihane and others said about the job becoming mundane when you are seemingly doing the same thing everyday.
The way I see it though, the only way this job can become boring or monotonous is if you make it so. Taking shortcuts does not always make you smarter and looking for easy ways out will only hurt you in the long run. As Blakely and Muldoon explained, anyone can crowd around Paul Pierce getting the same big quotes, writing the same basic story. You will never become a stand-out writer if you follow the crowd.
In one of the articles on blackboard, ESPN ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer discussed the importance of the audience. Without an audience who depends on and trusts you to write for, there would be no need to stand out in the crowd. If you are writing for a smaller paper like Muldoon, outside of the city, you have to give the audience a reason to read. As both our guests explained, no one wants to read a game recap the next day with the 24-hour news cycle the way it is. Making stories fresh and up-to-date gives the audience a reason to come back for more. Tell them something ESPN, and the Globe, and the eleven o’clock news didn’t already drill into their heads all night.
To do that though you need personality. It is not enough to just be a good writer. You can have style and grammatical perfection, but if you have no information to work with, not even COM’s writing training can weave a story someone wants to read. You notice both Sherrod and Mike when they enter the room and that presence is vital when you are in a locker room filled with egos. To become a successful beat reporter you need to report, being there only is a small (although crucial part) of the job. Sherrod had the chance to break the Wallace retirement story, only because he had gone out of his way to speak to people behind the scenes who others thought were not as important.
We’ve heard over and over about the importance of not burning bridges, endless rolodexes, and being friendly even if you don’t need to be. Mike and Sherrod pointed out what we don’t hear though, how the truly good scoops come from the guy who takes out the trash or the clubhouse manager, not from guys who run their mouths like Scott Boras or Mark Cuban. Angus pointed out that passion and drive are needed to become “satisfied” as a journalist. To me though, it’s not letting that love and passion for the game blur the truth of what needs to be reported; that makes you become a real master of the field. Most importantly, it’s the little relationships that you build not the fashionable ones that will help you stand out in the crowd.
Chris posted on September 30, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Above anything else, my time spent as a beat reporter during my four years at BU has given me some of the most invaluable career experiences and paved the way for what I hope my career will be.
Mike and Sherrod were an interesting blend in that you saw a writer from a more high profile outlet such as Sherrod, while MIke, as he described, commandeered a “mid major” paper. I was able to relate to Mike in a number of different ways based on my experience while reporting for our student run radio station here on campus.
It’s no secret that the FreeP gets the majority of the sports coverage on campus, drawing the most readers and viewers. When I was a freshman, WTBU was obsolete. But the station has come a long ways since, and has now established itself as one of the premier sports media outlets for everything Terrier Athletics. But still, there is always the obstacle, when covering events on campus, of how to get noticed. How will I direct people away from the usual sources, how will I get them hooked? When Tristan asked Sherrod and Mike that last week, he might as well have been saying my exact thoughts, because we both have endured the growing pains that reporting for a “mid major” media outlet entail.
One of the most important aspects of standing out, for me, and as Sherrod put it, was to act like you belong there. Be comfortable asking the question that you want to ask, and make yourself stand out–in a good way. During my team covering BU hockey, I’ve learned that, sitting in post game press conference after press conference, that I don’t always have to–nor want to–be the first person to pipe up after a coach or athlete walks in. “What were your thoughts on that game?” “Take us through that goal.” Those are the vanilla questions that won’t get my media outlet noticed. As Mike put it, I have to take a certain aspect of the game, and analyze that.
There is a rush that being a beat reporter brings that I haven’t experienced in any of my class or group here on campus. Yes, being on camera is great, seeing a package you put hours into finally air is great, but beat reporting brings you closer to a team–to a story–than anything else ever will. Getting a chance to see the same 20+ guys after every game, and becoming acquainted with other people in the business–despite them being your competition, having them get to know you and respect you is worth the hours upon hours that you invest into it. Mike and Sherrod both affirmed that for me last week, now more than ever before.