fshorr's blog

After listening two weeks ago to Michael Felger and Tanya Ray Fox, sports media professionals who do their jobs well without attending many games, it was interesting to see the flip side – beat reporters, Ben Violin and Baxter Holmes, who are tasked with going to every home game and most of the road games, too, for the Patriots and Celtics, respectively.

The role of beat reporters has certainly changed over the years. These journalists used to be the keepers of stats and play-by-play game information. Today though, that job is often done by the teams themselves on their own websites. Now, a beat reporter’s job seems much more dependent on telling the story you can’t get from stats. Mike Gleason predicted this in 2009 when he said, “The majority of sports media… will find itself serving principally for analysis. Stories will focus less on what happened than why a certain thing happened, and what might happen in the future.” (http://bleacherreport.com/articles/231701-bill-belichick-and-the-obsolescence-of-sports-media-access) In a strange turn of events, beat reporters are competing against the very teams they’re reporting on. At the same time, teams depend on them to keep interest up in their franchises.

Prior to this talk, I had often wondered why beat reporters tend to stay with a certain sport, even if they switch teams and papers. Violin addressed this by saying baseball has a wide open culture when it comes to information flow while football is very secretive in how news comes out. Holmes said that the NBA, too, has a different way of delivering information. I imagine this makes it difficult to transition to other sports since day-to-day business would work differently, but I’m still surprised more reporters don’t change what they cover. I would be curious to know if most beat reporters wind up sticking with the sport they initially started out reporting on professionally. Part of it is likely comfort and experience – once someone starts covering football, it’s probably easier to get other football reporting gigs – but what if you were a huge hockey fan who started out covering basketball? I would have liked to learn if the transition happens often.

As opposed to Felger and Fox, Violin and Holmes see face time as an essential part of their work. Violin said that he’s never had a problem talking to a player in a one-on-one setting but that typically, athletes hate being crowded around by cameras looking for a soundbyte. Facetime seems as essential a part to sports reporting as it is to any reporting. Without making personal time with players, how could they trust you enough to provide a good story? I think the same goes for any interviewing. If you try to talk to people over email or by phone, the stories never seem to be as good as if you were talking to them face-to-face.

During the talk, Holmes also pointed out that the articles that are most worthwhile are the ones that take the most time to write. Considering how many journalists are being laid off left and right today, I’m surprised that newspapers are still giving reporters the time to flesh out those stories. Having previously worked in journalism, I’ve often seen reporters expected to pick up the workload of coworkers who lost their jobs. They essentially have to pick up more stories in the same amount of time and for less money. I was happy to hear that The Boston Globe seems to know why readers keep coming back and it’s often for the more in-depth stories you can’t find anywhere else.

The beat reporting seminar showed how hard sports journalists really have to work. It revealed how much you have to know (including areas of reporting not specific to sports – i.e. crime), because you never know how stories will intertwine. Sometimes when I think of sports journalism the first thing that comes to mind is a game story. But, as we learned in the seminar from Volin and Holmes, there is so much more to it than that. And that is the major thing I took from the night. This pertinence of relationship-building, and the patience you need to have to build trust is key. To do this is hard work and takes a lot of time.

Another aspect I took from the seminar that I think you wanted us, is this insistence that you need to go to everything and make an effort. You can’t just show up during big events and expect people to trust or respect you. You need to earn respect and trust, and you can’t do that without making an effort. You need to learn how to interact and work with all different kinds of people (who have different temperaments). You need to be respectful and professional but you can’t allow yourself to pushed over.

What is key, I think, is learning how to work with the people you are covering. You have to understand the “politics” of the business (that you are not always going to be able to report everything). And you have to understand that at some level, you just aren’t going to get the kind of access or answers you want (like in politics, people are only going to tell you what they want you to know, or are willing to divulge) . At the end of the day, you can’t force anyone to answer your questions, so just do the best you can: be respectful and professional. You need to understand the business you are getting into.

Quickly, I thinks Holmes’ point that reporting was absolutely KEY was spot-on. Last week our speakers talked a lot about personality and being distinct, but what use is it to have a distinctive voice if you do not have the kind of information (through reporting) that will really bring the story together? Yes, you need to know how to write and put together a good story, but you need to be able to do the necessary reporting and communicating to get that information. At the end of the day, while sports can be fun, sports journalism is still hard work!

There were so many layers to what we heard from Baxter Holmes and Ben Volin of the Boston Globe. From the politics of dealing with the team, agents, editors and fan base to handling the speed of the news cycle, the two of them painted a picture that is based in hard work and rewards going the extra mile.

As Nick Koop said in his post, the sports landscape is shifting towards entertainment, and this is creating an interesting challenge for beat reporters. Unlike what Michael Felger and Tanya Ray Fox are able to do creatively in their platforms, Holmes and Volin have a more strict script that they have to stick to in their writing. This is where that “extra mile” that Holmes spoke about comes in to play.

The two beat writers both spoke about the immediacy of news in the world of twitter, and how even if you break a story like an injury or an arrest, the news is likely to only be yours for seconds. As soon as others get wind of the story and confirm it, they are tweeting the exact same thing, rendering your “break” nearly useless. What I found interesting was their explanation for how to get around this issue. By combining entertainment and breaking news, you create what they called the “Hey Martha” story. The story that is so interesting, and in depth in its reporting, that the public enjoys it and the speed of other reporters doesn’t matter.

What this says to me is that in order to be a successful beat reporter in 2013, or any successful media professional for that matter, you have to demand a lot from yourself. Everyone has access to numbers, and quotes, and highlights. You have to give them something else. Something more. And that’s not easy. It requires creativity, and hard work, and years of relationship building.

“You can’t fake it.” Those were the words that stood out to me the most. The public, the teams, the agents, your editors, they all know the difference between good work and lazy work. And anything even close to lazy is unacceptable in today’s media market.

The seminar on beat reporting was the most fundamental seminar I think we will have all semester. Not only did we get a chance to talk to the professionals in the field who seem to be “beginning” in their own ways, but we talked to professionals in a part of the field that is essential for all of us to learn and understand.
Beat reporting, as Ben and Baxter told us, has become more than just numbers and reporting the game story. You can get the game story, the stats, the box score anywhere nowadays. Beat reporting has become more of analysis than it used to be and this seminar really opened our eyes to how much it has changed.
Both Ben and Baxter stressed the importance of relationships and being there. They are two main components of being good at beat reporting that many wont admit. You cannot just be a good writer or even know the sport you are covering, you need to know the right people, gain the access that others don’t have.
That is what separates you from the Joe Smoe out there who can write any game story by turning on NFL Sunday Ticket in Philadelphia and write about the San Diego Chargers vs the Tennessee Titans game.
Not only were we able to question Ben and Baxter about what is important about their jobs and what about their jobs may not be as glamorous as it seems, like travelling and always being there, but we also were able to hear experiences.
After all, it seemed that the main take away from Ben and Baxter were their stories and experiences that they had early on in their careers that helped to teach them lessons and habits that they exhibit today. Learning how to deal with struggling athletes, angry coaches, or even sneaky coaches was something we could have never learned through a lecture or anything. This seminar allowed us to hear first hand experiences from two up and coming reporters who have had different backgrounds but can agree that the work is about people, and that we shouldn’t forget that.
I cant even remember how often they agreed that their best stories were about the human side of sports. The stories about human experiences rather than sports triumphs were best to write about most rewarding.

This will prove to be very useful for most, if not all, of our futures as those of us in print will probably end up being a Beat reporter somewhere along the line. Beat reporting seems to be an evolving job that has a lot to do sports knowledge, analysis, and humans. Relationships can take you a long way in this field and though Ben called it “politics” and kissing ass where you need to in order to get a scoop next time, I feel like its necessary but not necessarily a bad thing.

To connect it to our first seminar, something that struck me as interesting was how Tanya Fox and Mike Felger both talked about how money runs the news. The NFL’s deal with ESPN will hurt football beat writers and not allow you to get all of the scoops. They seemed certain about this and how it could ruin beat reporting and how it was awful.
Ben and Baxter didn’t seem as worried and seemed to accept it as ”part of the job”. I think Baxter made a great point when he said he’d much rather break a story that takes time, takes three or four or 10 people to talk to in order to get the full story. Not something tat someone can just call to confirm or deny over a simple phone call. I think that that is a lesson that is hard to learn but something that all beginners need to strive for and understand. The relationships you build within your coverage can lead to a bigger break even if Adam Schefter is breaking the news that Reggie Bush is inactive this Sunday and you didn’t report it first.
Money may rule some news, but good reporting and strong relationships can really go a long way as a beginner beat reporter and that’s something that may not have been picked up until we were on the job, for months if not for Ben and Baxter talking to us last week.

Beat reporting is the basis for every sports writer. In most cases, you are going to start by following a team, and doing beats about them every day for a small newspaper. That’s why it was important to start, after an more general introduction, by a seminar of beat reporting. The two journalists that came to talk were very interesting and spoke very well of their jobs. For aspiring sports writers such as us, it was essential to have an inside view of what the beat reporting job is really about. Ben Violin and especially Baxter Holmes are at a stage of their career that is very close to ours, or what we aspire to be, and the tips they gave us are essential.

Nowadays, with all the technologies available to us, with scores and statistics on your phones live during games, beat reporting is less about pure game stories, and more about finding an angle that make people want to read you. They addressed that issue in the seminar: Holmes said that with most news story, you have exclusivity for barely a minute, if it takes a phone call to verify. That’s why you need to work hard on your stories, with lots of different sources and research, to make it harder to verify and keep exclusivity longer. There has got to be a “wow-factor”, something that differentiates you from all the other sports writers in the country. What they were in agreement on, is that a good story writes itself if you have all the facts and statistics and information you need. We talked about it in the first seminar, again in this one, and it’s going to come back in many of other seminars: reporting has become an essential part of the job, people are interested in analysis and your opinion. What I wanted to learn, and what I did learn from this seminar is how to balance the fact that you still have to write about a team and its daily life, but at the same time include your opinion and analysis, which can be a hard balance.

I feel that the speakers at that seminar gave us very useful information, that we cannot learn in school: how to act in a locker room, with players, and coaches, who to be close to in order to get the best information, how to criticize a player without him never wanting to talk to you again. As a beat reporter, you have to walk on a fine line. As Holmes said: “you are the messenger to the people not the spokesman of the team”. One of the biggest lesson I took from this seminar is that if you stay professional, and show that you work hard, they will respect you.

From a student point of view, these lessons are very important. Most of us have never been close to a locker room, and much less to interviewing important players and coaches. That is why having the chance to meet and talk with journalists that have experience in that particular area was essential. What I feel missed, for obvious reasons, from this seminar, was what it is like for women beat journalists. More and more women are trying to make a career in sports, and I hope the seminar coming up later this semester will answer some of my questions.

To sum up why I thought this seminar was essential to our course:
– Beat reporting is the basis of every sports journalists working in print. At one point, you will be a beat reporter.
– We can learn a lot in class, but you learn more by being there: that is why we need to talk to professional sports writers, that can give us very useful advice on how to be a good beat reporter. Personally, it reassured me a little on what the future holds.
– It confirms what we observed from the first seminar: a shift in sports journalism, from news to opinion writing.

Sports Seminar
Beat Reporting Comment

For most Boston University students interested in beat reporting, they have somewhat easy access to getting hands-on experience through The Daily Free Press or WTBU. They learn the basics – live blogging, tweeting, writing game stories and sidebars and interviewing coaches and players. At the same time, though, they have a far different experience from professionals. With minimal competition and few outlets for fans to actually watch the games, writing literal game stories and getting basic information out to followers becomes mandatory.

That, of course, is not the case for reporters covering professional sports teams. As Boston Globe reporters Baxter Holmes and Ben Volin discussed during Thursday’s seminar on beat reporting, with changes in media, professional beat reporters need to look beyond the basic and search for the unique.

As sports journalism students, we are more like the professionals mentioned in a 2010 Nieman Report titled “The Sports Beat: A Digital Reporting Mix – With Exhaustion Built In.” (http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102522/The-Sports-Beat-A-Digital-Reporting-MixWith-Exhaustion-Built-In.aspx) In the article, Dave Kindred concludes that changes in media are comparable to a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle: “It’s thorough in a way that journalists know is deadly to their work. It’s thorough in that it records everything with little regard for context, perspective or narrative. It’s thorough in the way a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle is thorough; it’s all there, the consumer just has to put the pieces together.”

For Baxter and Volin, however, they have adapted to the changes in social media and moved on from that. Anyone can report an injury. Once one person has sent out a tweet about it, another person can, in seconds, call and confirm the injury and tweet it out. Breaking this kind of news isn’t as memorable. As Professor Shorr mentions, Holmes specifically brought up the “Hey, Martha” story that everyone should strive to write. A story where someone can’t just make a single phone call to also report is something to work for, and that involves really creating relationships with players and gaining peoples’ trust.

As Katarina already mentioned, Tanya Ray Fox discussed in our first seminar how there would always be a need for beat reporters. That first seminar focused on the entertainment side of the industry, but without the facts the industry could not exist.

Eddie said in his comment last week that “old” journalism was dying because it’s boring. This week proved, however, that “old” journalism is actually evolving to create more extensive content. As Holmes and Volin made clear, while human interest stories are unique and bring in readers, they are based on the work they do every day as beat reporters. Building relationships and being fair to both the reader, your publication and the team help you to discover the information that then becomes fodder for radio and television shows.

This is why the seminar was essential for us to hear. After a week of discussing the entertainment side of the sports industry, it was key for us to hear about how beat reporters are necessary. Furthermore, as students who are learning new forms of media and experimenting with them, it was incredibly important for us to learn that we can’t become overwhelmed with the basic story, and that we should strive for the unique “Hey, Martha” piece.

The job of a beat reporter relates back to our discussion from last week’s speakers, as well. As the landscape of sports journalism continues to change, the job of a reporter becomes more and more difficult. There is such a thin line between being too close and not close enough. If you are overbearing as a reporter, it will be impossible to form a substantial relationship with the athletes or coaches you cover. However, if you are too close, you run the risk of praising your subjects rather than delivering the truth to your readers or viewers.

I think bringing in two beat reporters who are on the verge of experiencing new aspects of their career is helpful to aspiring journalism students. It would be less beneficial to hear from beat reporters who have spent their entire careers in the field, building the necessary bridges needed. Instead, it is much more helpful hearing from Ben Volin who is a “rookie” switching to a new NFL team or from Baxter Holmes who is soon to encounter a “new” Celtics organization. This gives aspiring students the chance to really understand what it is like out there.

I think that beat reporting would be an extremely difficult journalism duty. It includes the old-fashioned nitty-gritty style of journalism. From grinding out articles when there may not even be anything to write to establishing relationships with people you need information from, beat reporting is exhausting.

I read an interesting article that can be found at:
http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/chip-on-your-shoulder/5229/beat-reporting-what-does-it-take-to-be-the-best/

In the article I think this was an interesting statement by author, Chip Scanlon. He said:

“The best beat reporters I’ve known are well-organized, determined, with a clear sense of mission and a wide range of sources. They are constantly reading about the beat and striving to learn new things. They are well-versed in the language, issues and events that matter. They are judged by the breadth of their knowledge and their success at communicating the important stories on their beats.”

There are so many duties to juggle as a beat reporter. You must be able to do all of these things mentioned above while maintaining a relationship with your subjects that allow you to benefit as a journalist.

This all goes back to my initial point, that beat reporting is direct product of the changing landscape of sports journalism. As with Tanya Ray Fox and Mike Felger, there are difficulties they face that just pile on top of the list of things that a beat reporter already has to do. For example, Tanya Ray Fox said that there are barriers she faces as being a female writer. Well, combine those things she faces and add them to what a female beat reporter would experience. Imagine being one of the only women, if not alone, in the locker room with a group of pro baseball players. You have to juggle remaining professional, staying focused, maintaining or establishing relationships, along with a list of other responsibilities. Even better, you have two hours to gather all of this information and submit a story to your editor.

The job of a beat reporter has always been difficult and will continue to develop as the landscape of sports becomes more advanced. Journalists need to understand that the entertainment aspect of sports broadcast or writing is completely set aside from the traditional forms of journalism. As much fun as it may be to argue and scream over a microphone on the radio or TV, it is really the job of a beat reporter that is important. Do you want a “hey Martha” piece? It isn’t going to come from regurgitating deadbeat information over the radio. It is going to come from a beat reporter who spends their days grinding as a journalist in and out of a team’s lockerroom, whether they are winning or losing, welcoming or cold. Journalism’s foundation was created by beat reporting and the job will continue to be essential to the quality of our field.

Baxter Holmes and Ben Volin, beat writers for the Boston Globe, both gave us valuable information regarding the ever-changing field of sports journalism and what it means to be a solid beat writer in a crazy sports city like Boston. I’ll get to why the seminar was important but first, here are my biggest takeaways from the seminar.

– find human stories
– build on facts, no need for opinion
– you need to be a fan of good stories, not necessarily a fan of the team
– go to players who put a little thought in their quotes, don’t follow the crowd
– players always read what’s out there, if they tell you they don’t they’re lying
– you can use stats to show a player sucked without actually saying they sucked
– appreciate the work you have to put in otherwise you’ll end up like Maurice Clarett
– you can’t fake trust with the players and coaches, it takes time
– people can get information from a number of different websites online, so the job of the beat writer is find some stories that are behind the scenes with some analysis- coaches know this so they sometimes make it harder for sports journalists to get the story that no one else knows yet
– be a bull**** detector, especially wen it comes to players’ agents
– keep your options open and don’t obsess over when you will get your big break
– managing relationships is the best way to collect cell phone numbers
– whatever job you start out with, take it as seriously as covering the White House, and take whatever job you can get right out of the gate

Why These Points Were Important to Learn in Our Seminar:

Finding human stories can be challenging, but according to Baxter Holmes, they are key because it’s something nobody else has seen or read yet. As new aspiring journalists, we need to be able to distinguish ourselves from others and make a name for ourselves. It’s the human stories, the “hey martha” stories as Frank and many of my colleagues pointed out, that everyone can pick up, read, and enjoy. They speak to everyone and yet no one has seen that specific story yet. It’s not like a score, or an injury update, or even analysis of a game or player. That’s why it’s so great.

Just because beat reporters are constantly looking for spins on stories to give big picture analysis writing, does not mean you need to build these stories on opinion. Build on the facts. For me, I assumed that in order to provide a slant on a sports issue, I need to form an opinion and write about it. But that is not the case as learned in this seminar. Still come up with cleaver ways to spin a story in a way that no one has heard or read yet, but you don’t need to impose your opinion in your writing. The facts are there so you use them, just use them differently than everyone else.

I still have never truly envisioned working outside the city of Boston because this is where I grew up. I’ve been a fan of the sports teams here ever since I can remember and I always thought in order to be great journalist, you needed to at least like the team, or root for the team you are covering. But Baxter Holmes made it perfectly clear in the seminar that you don’t necessarily have to be a fan of the teams you are covering. You just need to be a fan of good stories.

Plenty of players give you next to nothing when you interview them. Most of us have never been in a locker room before and knowing how to get good quotes that very few other people have is a vital skill for the new journalist to learn. According to Baxter Holmes, go to the guys who puts a little thought into what they say. Offensive lineman seem to be put together and often give great quotes. Oh, and don’t follow the crowds. Find an athlete that doesn’t have a ton of reporters hovering over him, and just go and talk to him. Be conversational. Find the story no one else is writing with the athlete no one else is hovering over.

According to both Holmes and Volin, players actually do read what’s out there about them. They care way more than they let on. So some advice for new journalists, since they read your stuff…..if they like your stuff, they will let you talk to them. Plain and simple. They know who puts in the time, and they’ll give you credit for that.

Katarina brought up a very good point in our seminar. She asked how you write that a player sucked without actually saying that they sucked. Both Holmes and Volin agreed that you use stats to say a player sucked. When you say that Paul Pierce shot 3 of 16 from the field, that’s all you need to say.

Finding stories that are different from everyone else can be tough. Learning how to separate yourself from the pact, as I said before is not easy. But it’s very important to come come up with something people can’t just find on Twitter. You need to give them something behind the scenes. But in order to do that, you need great quotes and sometimes coaches don’t oblige. Just look at Bill Belichick. He exemplifies the new attitude towards sports journalists. He is famous for giving boring, information-free press conferences, and ensuring his players do likewise. He has cultivated a no-frills public image, free of the eccentricities that make for good feature stories. He knows that his job hinges upon his win-loss record and championships, not the whims of a few beat writers. Belichick either recognizes, or merely benefits from, the current situation in sports journalism: the power of these writers, and even television personalities, is at its nadir (http://bleacherreport.com/articles/231701-bill-belichick-and-the-obsolescence-of-sports-media-access).

Getting information is never easy, especially when you are a new journalist and no one knows who you are yet. So the best advice Volin could give us was to be an absolute B.S. detector. Agents, players, coaches, they are all going to lie to you, and we have to be able to differentiate what’s true and what’s not. This honestly may have been the most important piece of advice given during the entire seminar. This job is hard enough, but now we have to be lawyers and judges and know whose lying to us and who isn’t? Damn.

According to Volin, you need to keep your options open and try not to obsess over when your big break will come. No one wants to start at the bottom of the barrel but we all have to. And the only way you’ll ever get your big break, is if you keep working hard. If you need to take a job in Idaho so you can get your feet wet, take the job. Take whatever you can get and then work up from there. Some of us may have a tendency to wait around for the perfect job, but it just doesn’t work that way.

What’s the best way to get contacts to help leak you information? It’s really simple according to Volin. Collect as many cellphone numbers as possible! Be respectful to everyone and be friendly. Manage your relationships and hope that one day when you send out that text to that person you met at an event near the TD Garden, that they return it with some vital information. Bam you have a contact!

And finally, Holmes gave us the most important piece of information I thought in the entire seminar. You’re going to start out in a low-level job. But it’s super important to take the job as seriously as if you were covering the White House. It’s easy to not put your best work in when you start out in a small market, but if you put in the work, you will get noticed. It just takes time.

It may come off that all of this was just summary, but in truth, every single point I made is important, and all contributed to why the seminar was important to have and I hope I made that clear with each separate factoid I listed off that Holmes and Volin enlightened us on.

We truly learned the day in the life of a sports beat reporter during this seminar. We learned what makes them successful, and how they got to where they are today. If that isn’t important information for our little noggins, I don’t know what is. The big picture of the seminar: work your frigging tail off!