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This topic takes several ideas we’ve touched on throughout the semester – building personal relationships, having thick skin, straddling the line between sensational reporting and self-aggrandizement – and applies them to extreme circumstances. Nothing tests these qualities in a journalist like covering a big story.

I followed the New Orleans bounty story very closely, and I’ll be the first to admit I was entirely wrong about Sean Pamphilon. I couldn’t imagine anyone releasing that kind of audio without knowing it would make him an overnight celebrity, albeit an infamous one. But like the saying goes, any press is good press, and before I heard his side, I thought Sean’s decision contained a big element of self-promotion.

I was wrong. But I think I’m right in stating that to an extent, 21st-century, Twitter-dominated journalism doesn’t function without self-promotion. The field is just too competitive. Big stories bring chances for reporters to toot their own horns without seeming disingenuous, and I think it’s crucial to nail those opportunities when they come along. But like Sean said, you have to believe in your cause. He started a film on brain damage and football before the NFL shoved concussions to the top of its agenda. The league offered him a fat paycheck to keep quiet, and he turned it down. While the backlash Sean encountered was incredibly vicious, he can still see the silver linings, like responses from appreciative parents, because he believed so strongly in his cause.

As for being first on a big story, that will always be important. But today’s speed of information travel guarantees that as the breaking reporter, you won’t be standing alone for long; as Bob pointed out, you can’t sit on anything anymore. The Penn State scandal is perhaps the biggest story in the history of college sports, but does anyone remember the names of reporters who broke it? Personally, I appreciate journalists who can meaningfully and logically analyze big stories as much as those who can deliver 140-character chunks of sensationalism on Twitter. There’s value in that. Jim Rome isn’t my favorite sports journalist, but it’s hard to argue with his calling-card advice: “have a take, and don’t suck.”

But inserting yourself into the narrative arc of a big story is a huge deal. I recently read a story by longtime Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith that captures the trickiness and repercussions of making this move. In the mid-90s, there was a huge scandal involving a high school basketball star named Richie Parker, a top recruit who was convicted of sexual assault. The juiciness made the story priority No. 1 for The New York Post. The reporter covering the high school sports beat was a 25-year-old in his first major gig. For months, he faced enormous daily pressure to get something new, to question any school that would still offer a convicted offender a basketball scholarship, to relentlessly hound this kid and drive the magnitude of Parker’s mistake into his subconscious. The reporter was criticized ruthlessly for his investigative work, because the public couldn’t grasp the pressure his editors had leveed on him.

It’s a long story but a good read if you have time. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1008297/index.htm

As journalists, we could conceivably stumble onto a big story at any time. Who knows, maybe the next hockey phenom is playing in International Falls, Minn., a regular Gordon Bombay waiting to be discovered by an intrepid reporter with a nose for talent. It’s a long shot, but if it happens, you better pounce on it. And if it turns out to be your big break, you better be prepared for a bumpy ride. Personal relationships are everything in sports journalism. But when you’re covering a big story, sometimes making a few enemies is just the cost of doing business.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but shouldn’t the instantaneousness with which news is broken – and more to the point – published – make being first less important?

As Bob Ryan mentioned, if a reporter had an inside scoop in the days before the internet, they would write a story about it, send it to their editor and it would appear in the newspaper the next day. Often, other outlets would then be unable to provide that information to their readers for another 24 hours.

Today, the ability to publish news instantly cuts two ways. While reporters can get credit for being the first to break a story thanks to instant publication technology like Twitter on smart phones, it also allows other news outlets to publish that story (with attribution) soon thereafter.

Doesn’t the ability of every site to have similar information within minutes of one another inherently decrease the importance of being the first? Isn’t being the first for 24 hours far more important than 24 minutes?

I realize that from an editor’s perspective it is important to see their beat reporters breaking news and not constantly having to cite competitors’ information, but for readers determining which outlet to give their pages views to, the quality of the work seems like it would be the most important factor, not who had the story first.

Earlier in the year, Fluto Shinzawa said he wants to break as many stories as possible, but said he has to accept that he’s not going to get them all. So long as he breaks his fair share of stories, readers will seek out his work (or not) based on his writing ability, his insight, etc. What this suggests, which I agree with, is that unless even casual observers recognize that a reporter is breaking all (or none) of the news on a particular beat, doing so is not going to be a major factor in that reporter’s/outlet’s popularity.

My point is merely that technology (and with it, the ability to instantly publish information) should – theoretically anyways – make this even more true.

What I think does make a difference in a reporter’s popularity is their ability to get the behind the scenes scoop on breaking news. For example, Adrian Wojnafcvnoadkfjasdfski may have been the first person to report that James Harden was traded to the Rockets, and he may break the news via Tweet, but if Marc Stein can put together a 1500 word story about the series of events leading up to the trade and give readers the ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how’, he has provided much more value than Woj’s 140 character ‘who’ and ‘what’.

Here’s an audio response from Greg and Kendall.

https://jockscraps.squarespace.com/jockscraps/2012/12/10/jock-scraps-xxii-serious-journalist-stuff

I posted this last night but I guess it didn’t go through…

When I wrote my post on Sunday I somehow forgot to include a very recent example of a sports broadcaster becoming the story…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2012/12/03/bob-costas-speaks-out-on-gun-control-after-jovan-belcher-murdersuicide/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2012/12/04/how-bob-costas-really-feels-about-guns-jovan-belcher-suicide-kansas-city-chiefs/1745491/

Both articles focus on how Bob Costas spoke out on the issue of gun control after the murder-suicide of Jovan Belcher. Many people feel that it wasn’t his place to speak on such a topic. In using his platform to talk about this issue, Costas became the story.

For me, this seminar made me think of how much getting the “big story” is a matter of either being in the right place at the right time or working your connections.

In my Sports Journalism class with Professor Flannery last semester, ESPN.com basketball writer Brian Windhorst came and spoke to us. If you follow the NBA and hear his first name, chances are the first name that comes to mind is LeBron James. Windhorst climbed the ladder from the Akron Beacon Journal to the Cleveland Plain Dealer to ESPN.com based on his reporting of and connection to James (they went to the same high school). Windhorst obviously couldn’t have known that when he started covering some kid at his old high school that that kid would become one of the best basketball players of all time, but he was smart and worked his connections.

On the other end, there are the “insiders,” reporters who seem to get all the scoops because of the connections they’ve worked hard to make. One of the best tools a journalist can have is trustworthiness. If a source can trust you — and that trust is built over time — then that could lead to several big stories. Reporters like Adam Schefter, Chris Mortensen, Jay Glazer and Adrian Wojnarowski have spent years cultivating sources to become leading insiders.

When you work as hard as they do to get scoops, you want to get the credit. Here’s an example of Glazer going after ESPN for not crediting him with breaking a story:

http://www.sbnation.com/2012/11/14/3644570/jay-glazer-espn-ben-roethlisberger

One of the reasons I enjoy reading Wojnarowski’s work is because he’s a master at dropping little insider items in his columns, stuff that barely anyone knows about. Here’s a recent piece he wrote about David Stern and the Spurs:

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba–david-stern-stumbles-again-in-his-failed-culture-war-against-the-spurs-194828970.html

There were a few important topics this seminar covered, ranging from journalists becoming the story to breaking news and releasing the right information. I agree with pretty much everything Bob Ryan and Sean Pamphilon talked to us about last week.

You never want to become the story, whether it’s Ines Sainz and her clothing or Bob Ryan’s comments on Joumana Kidd. Recently, two ESPN Radio hosts — Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin — talked about how they were anti-transgender (http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2012/12/10/espn-radios-steve-czaban-and-andy-pollin-in-horrific-anti-transgender-rant/), something that has gotten them in the news.

The best way to avoid becoming the story is just to stay as neutral as possible and refrain from making outrageous statements. It’s hard, especially if you’re in a more casual setting such as a radio studio. But it’s important, because you’re still a journalist and you shouldn’t be making controversial comments like Bob Costas’ comments on gun control.

But sometimes, as Sean Pamphilon’s situation shows us, you just can’t avoid becoming the story. Sometimes people are going to question whether or not information should be released and attack you that way. It’s an unavoidable part of journalism, but there’s a different between becoming the story for releasing crucial information as opposed to becoming news for making a dumb comment.

As Ryan said, there are plenty of things we can only learn from experience — including what information should we, as journalists, release and what we should keep. As a beat reporter, something I’ve learned is there’s really no one who can tell you how to be a beat reporter, you kind of just have to throw yourself out there and figure out what to do.

As far as breaking news goes, I agree with Jon. It seems less important to me as well to have the scoop first, because everyone just piggybacks off of that. No one is really going to remember who breaks it first, and I feel as though that’s especially the case with sports because of ESPN and the ScoreCenter application.

I feel as though it’s more important to come up with the right follow-up stories. For example, if a player has left or has been traded, why did they leave? How does the team plan on filling their spot? That’s more important than sending out a single tweet saying “BREAKING” and a 200-word story, because everyone is going to publish some form of the original news on their website that just links to the original story.

As a beat reporter I do feel the need to have information first, but I know it needs to be correct. That means I have to force myself to take a few extra seconds and make sure there are no typos or fact check. After having done this a few times, I know I’d rather take a little longer and have the correct information that have it first and make a mistake.

The big story can be everything for a journalist. It can make or break your career. As we saw with Sean Pamphilon, he will most likely forever be known as man associated with “bounty gate.”

Another sports journalist that seems to consistently find himself in the big story is Jim Gray. Back in 1999, Gray interviewed Pete Rose at Fenway Park during the All-Star game festivities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4fmEbgKeh0 The interview quickly soured as Gray decided to turn the positive event into a negative one by looking to get an answer about Rose’s gambling. This is an example of Gray getting too involved in a big story and I can’t imagine Rose ever granted Gray another interview.

Although the situation was quite a bit different, Gray conducted the interview during “The Decision” of LeBron James. The interviewed seemed quite the opposite of the Rose interview as with LeBron it seemed to be more of a fluff piece, rather than a hard-hitting encounter.

Clearly, journalists need to find that perfect balance between hard-hitting to get the answer everyone wants to know and the fluff that helps the interview subject feel comfortable. Going too far in either direction might put the journalist in a bad light. In the case of the Pete Rose interview, the story became somewhat about Gray and why he would decide to turn such a joyous occasion, a rare time in which Rose was allowed back into a baseball park, into the complete opposite.

If that balance is not found, then the journalist is likely to be blacklisted. This could be by a specific athlete, a team, or even if the situation is extreme enough, an entire league. It’d be tough to imagine many NFL teams willingly granting locker room access to Sean Pamphilon after what happened with the Saints. Although it might not have necessarily been his fault, other teams see the severe penalties that were inflicted on the Saints and would have no interest in risking anything of that sort.

If you follow any of the local sports reporters on twitter, you can see firsthand how fast they have to report and react to new developments. Just today, I logged onto twitter and noted that a few reporters were tweeting about Deion Branch being re-signed. As we’ve talked about earlier in the seminar series, it’s important not to just jump into the twitter/blog race to be first, without checking AND double checking your sources. Because being wrong might just cause you to find yourself in hot water, i.e. Steve Burton.

It’s crazy to think that your reputation can be tarnished by one story, but it’s the truth in our industry. It’s even crazier when you think about the years that go into gaining that professional respect and loyalty from your audience.

I think it would be difficult for anyone to find themselves in Mr. Pamphilon’s shoes. As he said, it’s really a no-win situation. I will admit that I wondered why he didn’t contact the league when he first heard Gregg Williams make the comments. And then I thought about it some more, and I understand he probably felt like the bond he had with Steve Gleason was more important at the time.

I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I found myself in that situation. I guess the best any of us can do is weigh the options and think about the ramifications of going public. I imagine that breaking a story is probably one of the most thrilling feelings a journalist experiences, and in the end, we’re always seeking that new information that no one else has.

Finally, just wanted to wish those graduating the best of luck finding that first job! Maybe someday we’ll be the ones giving advice to the sports seminar class.

Like many of the previous posts, I too felt that Bob Ryan and Sean Pamphilon touched upon some of the most important aspects discussed within the field of sports journalism (i.e. trust, relationships, accuracy etc.). What was most surprising however, was that I discovered that I am apparently from the “old school” realm of reporting.

Truthfully, I have always felt that when it comes to sports reporting, it is the one form of news that does not necessarily have to contain “non-biased facts” or straight forward play-by-play. Sports, after all, is entertainment and emotionally loaded. I have always felt that in order to produce a quality story, a sports reporter needed to be a fan first and a good storyteller. Ryan was/is just that.

It was refreshing to hear someone with credentials such as Ryan speak candidly about his career. “No one will ever accuse me of being a great reporter…I didn’t have the skin for that… I was always an observer.”

This is an approach I would like to have on the job. To have a long and esteemed career like Ryan, you have to be able to be tolerated and respected by different generations of players. His approach as an observer, rather than an expert, hard-hitting, journalist, I believe was his biggest asset. While that does not mean he is exempt from criticizing players when the situation calls for it, players understand when they read a Ryan piece that he is not attacking them because he feels as though he is an expert or aiming for self-promotion.

If Ryan had to work constantly at developing trust while on the Celtics’ beat and constantly toe the line between what is printable and what isn’t, Sean Pamphilon most certainly did as well. Perhaps even more so.

To me, Pamphilon came across as a journalist who was getting into the industry at a time when the dynamics were beginning to change. “I didn’t want to be in a room with 10 guys all night eating pizza and not doing anything.”

That quote suggests that Pamphilon realized the direction the industry was going. That direction is one of white-noise, where all information sounds the same and the twitter sphere posts “stories” just for the sake of adding follower or gaining clicks on a page.

As a player advocate, Pamphilon cannot become the story. It is his job to make the story about the players and their families and lives at all times. His job is to make their story heard. That is why when he spoke about the “bountygate” scandal, you could see how overtly irritated he was about the situation. He had taken the time to build relationships with individual Saints players and other members of the organization. To have players that he felt shared a mutual trust turn on him must have seemed like a slap in the face.

The backlash that has come down against him illustrates just how much the term “facts” has become muddied. Until hearing Pamphilon tell our class that he did not release the video but leaked it to the NFL, I, like many others, saw him as a self-promoter looking for clicks. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Once his name got out there however, he became the scapegoat for a much larger issue. With the multiple media platforms, there is just no trust left between the media and the players. I assume this is why public relations is one of the few industries that is adding more and more jobs.

The first thing that came to my mind in the “getting it first vs. getting it right” struggle for a big story was the 2006 Duke Lacrosse case. It’s a pretty well-known event, but here’s the frame: A young, black single mother from North Carolina Central University accused three Duke Lacrosse players of raping her at a party. It was billed as a case study of class and hate crimes: Three upper-class white sports stars rape a poor black girl from the wrong side of the tracks. In a rush to report that frame, a few members of the press vilified the players. Selena Roberts immediately wrote a piece in the New York Times (that has mysteriously disappeared from the Times archive and pretty much everywhere else on the internet) that condemned the three alleged criminals.

The frame was later busted. Further investigation found out that the prosecutor and the victim were both dishonest, and the players were exonerated. Roberts, urgent to be the first to react to the story’s initial frame, became a part of the story. She was a punching bag for other members of the media; an archetype for how not to react to a story. Jason Whitlock went after Roberts for her alleged penchant for questionable sourcing and sweeping generalizations (Roberts wrote a book on Alex Rodriguez that was the subject on controversy, too. Just look at Whitlock’s opening few graphs in the following link):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kyle/the-decline-and-fall-of-s_b_196747.html

The situation here is different (and more damning) than Bob Ryan’s gaffe in 2003. Selena Roberts has yet to apologize for the piece. And it’s different than getting a verifiable fact wrong. No one would call Robert’s piece accurate, but calling it “inaccurate” is a bit of a misnomer, too, since it’s an opinion based on a false premise. But her credibility has never been the same. It’s a telling example of how the rush to report and react can have harsh consequences if the story turns. And most of that story unfolded before Twitter really took hold. If there were a reincarnation of the alleged scandal in 2012, we might see many more journalists making mistakes on their 140-character high horses.

I think breaking the big story is important, but it seems obvious that it’s more important to be thorough. Someone already touched on it, but Greg Bedard’s position that he’d “rather be last than wrong” is salient. On a practical level, breaking the big story can get you a promotion, but breaking an inaccurate big story can get you fired. To make sure that doesn’t happen, you have to be thorough and accurate in your method for gathering and reporting the news. We’re in a business of credibility. If you lose public trust, it’s tough to gain it back at any news organization.

Whenever I think of the “big story,” I now think of the Jerry Sandusky story. I mean, this has now become a very iconic video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb49dXT_44M

Luckily for Bob Costas, and for Sara Ganim who broke the story, the only controversy that was part of the Jerry Sandusky story was on the Penn State end. Unfortunately Sean Pamphilon, part of the controversy was to run the story or not.

That all circles back to the question: if you get material on camera that could ruin someone’s career, but exposes a part of sports that needs to come public, do you run the story? Sean said many times that he defended the players in the bounty gate scandal. At the same time, he had to expose something that is hideous in the most popular sport in the world.

This kind of goes back to what Fluto Shinzawa said about getting information from a team and whether or not to report it. Of course in Fluto’s case, he reported on Tim Thomas’s knee injury and the Bruins got upset for giving away a competitive advantage.

Of course Sean’s case is much worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people don’t ever want to talk to him ever again. At the same time, he could completely change the way people play football.

Bob Ryan and Sean Pamphilon both said that there is really no line when it comes to what you should expose and what you shouldn’t. Journalists have to use their common sense. Sean mentioned that there are many parts of his 1000 hours of tape that he’s choosing not to use because it’s not worth exposing.

If writers want to become recognized, they will need to either write an exemplary article or say something noteworthy that will grab people’s attention. Compared to a generation ago, when Bob Ryan was a very polarizing figure for the Boston Globe, there are more writers and unqualified journalists than ever. Newspapers are slowly becoming a lost art, as the world has evolved into a fully digitalized place. Anyone can start a blog online. Unlike the past, when people only received few sources of media, readers can literally go anywhere to read about their favorite sports teams or players.

Therefore, I believe that writers need to make noteworthy comments nowadays, even if some of them are excessively bold, to get recognized by the public. Although I agree that writers should never talk about themselves when writing an article, they certainly need to make stronger and less neutral claims about the team or player they are writing about. That’s why satirical websites like Deadspin and Barstool have been extremely popular in recent years. They find humor in every sports story, and the writers of these websites are not afraid to make strong claims on a topic.

Furthermore, writers nowadays additionally have to make multiple public speaking appearances, both on television and radio. There are a plethora of aspiring sports journalists out there, so in order to stand out and make a name for themselves, they have every reason to make asinine comments on-air. Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith have made a living and have gained tremendous popularity in these past years by consistently making idiotic rants about players like Tim Tebow and LeBron James. Do you really believe people would watch ESPN’s First Take if both Smith and Bayless made neutral, constructive comments?

Ultimately, more than ever, writers and reporters need to make stronger claims to make a name for themselves. There are too many aspiring journalists nowadays who are trying to become publicly recognized and for them to compete, they need to take risks and provide noteworthy comments to gain name recognition.

Like Taylor, many of us thought that Sean Pamphilon may have had ulterior motives to bring himself into the spotlight when he exposed the New Orleans’ Saints bounty scandal, so I found it most interesting when he revealed that he actually wanted to release the tapes anonymously. He also treaded very carefully as he was making his choice. He morally struggled with whether or not he should release this information, and ultimately, he did not release it until the story had already gone public. In his case, he took as many precautions as possible to avoid “becoming the story,” but he could not escape the relentless fans who were angered by his decision.

This seminar made me acutely aware of the fine line between objective and subjective journalism. While Sean exposed proof of criminal activity within the New Orleans Saints organization, he tried to maintain his legitimacy as a journalist by letting the “tape speak for itself.” Journalists reporting on other major events, such as natural disasters, encounter this same challenge to remain as objective and factual as possible. But this is easier said than done. The article below was published early in 2010 in response to coverage of the tragic Haitian earthquakes. The Society of Professional Journalists reminds reporters to try their best to remove themselves from the story because “even in crises, journalists have a responsibility to their audiences to gather news objectively and to report facts.”

http://www.spj.org/news.asp?REF=948

One thing I took from both Ryan and Pamphilon’s experience was that once you say or release something controversial, there is no turning back. You can’t un-say it. That’s why I admired the way Pamphilon took a great deal of time to weigh the pros and cons of showing his recordings to the world. I hope that if I ever obtain such significant information as a reporter, I will be able to have the same control over the situation that he had. These are two very professional men, and while they may not be the “perfect” journalists, they remain focused on what the public has a right to know. In the future, I hope to achieve an objective voice as a journalist but also to silently hold onto my beliefs, in case a story ever calls for me to make a moral judgment.