fshorr's blog

The kind of all-in commitment it takes to be a beat reporter reminds me of what it’s like to be an athlete.

You dedicate your days to becoming the best you can be at your sport. You have crazy hours- from 6 a.m. practices to red-eye flights home after a game. You make decisions based off the betterment of yourself as an athlete or as a teammate. You always have your sport in the back of your mind, regardless of what is going on that day.

Doug Kyed, Tim Britton, and Adam Himmelsbach have that same commitment as I do to soccer, but they have it for their beat.

Chip Scanlan, in his article, “Beat Reporting: What Does it Take To Be The Best?”, said “Beat reporting takes courage, discipline and judgment, knowing which story has to be written today and which can be put off. It requires teamwork with an editor and other reporters. Working quickly: getting to sources and obtaining information and then writing on deadline stories that give the news and why it matters.”

The traits that Scanlan said encompass the best beat reporters, also make up great athletes.

That is an important lesson I have learned my last four years studying journalism at Boston University. I have realized that to be a good beat reporter, you have to be 110% committed. You have to work well with others. You have to have COURAGE to push yourself past what you thought was possible.

Does that not sound like the personality of an athlete?

Kyed of NESN.com made a comment that his laptop is always attached to him, like a basketball is always attached to Celtics players. He spends all of his time, especially during the Patriots season, working on the next article, the next practice, the next game. It’s his life.

He dedicates his time to the Patriots, but what does he get out of it? The answer is obvious- a job.

However, for beat reporters, it’s so much more than that. If they fit Scanlan’s criteria, they love what they do as much as I love being an athlete.

The good overshadows the bad and the ugly. The crappy hotels, the all-nighters to get the story in by deadline, and the constant travel, look minuscule once you think about the experience of covering a rivalry like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. There is a reason not everyone in the world is signing on to be a beat journalist. It’s not easy. It can be hard, awkward, and downright frustrating. It is, what we like to call off-season, a grind.

Britton went from covering fencing, to being a beat reporter of the Red Sox. Himmelsbach went from covering high school sports, to being The Globe’s beat reporter for the Celtics.

Isn’t the reason we do what we do for the satisfaction of success? Doing extra sprints at the end of practice, or staying up until 2 a.m. to finish a story, does not seem appealing to anyone.

But, there is NO better feeling than hoisting that trophy up after a championship win, or breaking the story before any other news outlet.

Without the bad and the ugly, the good wouldn’t feel so damn great.

http://www.poynter.org/2002/beat-reporting-what-does-it-take-to-be-the-best/5229/

“Beat reporting is the life-blood of local newspapers…The paper always needs someone to say what happened at the Celtics or Sox games last night. Those will be the last jobs at the paper to go.”

Adam, who covers the Celtics for the Globe, seems optimistic about the future of sports beat reporting. I believe that what he said is true, beyond just newspapers as well. The importance of journalists covering a sports team will last until the public stops caring about sports, which may be never. It proves to be vital even as mediums of journalisms change. Take Twitter for example, and Adam’s reference to the importance of live tweeting. As Twitter evolves and becomes more popular across all generations, the importance of live tweeting games and tweeting instant updates becomes more crucial to the job of beat reporters. In fact, it may be more important now than the stories that beat reporters write. Many fans now, including myself, follow the local beat reporters and beat reporters of our favorite teams, and rely on them for constant updates about our team’s players through Twitter. We rely on the instant in-game updates and analysis as well. More often than not, I do not have time to actually read the story that the beat writers of my favorite team file (although I do click on the link to their story now that I know the importance of page clicks and views).

I agree with what Rachel wrote, comparing the commitment it takes to be a beat reporter with being an athlete. I also agree with what Timmy wrote about the “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” applying to almost any job. Putting the two ideas together, it’s fair to say that my experiences as an athlete can translate to just about any job. Comparing it to beat reporting though, there is no doubt that the time commitments are similar. Being an athlete consumes your energy, thought process, and daily life, just as we heard Doug say about his job covering the Patriots. Just from following your favorite beat writers on Twitter, you should know how much time these people devote to their jobs. Beat writers are tweeting updates about their teams from the moment they wake up to the time they go to sleep, seven days a week. My friend’s father is the producer of the Rich Eisen Show in LA, and he has warned me that working in sports does not leave a lot of time for family, friends, and plenty else. Doug’s friends know by now that they can only be friends for six months out of the year, and Adam made reference to losing out on plenty of girlfriends because of his job.

“The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” may be a microcosm of sports journalism and beat reporting, but it may also be a microcosm for the lives of the people doing the reporting. Although the job may have awesome perks like going to the World Series, there will always be days where you can’t find a good story, and plenty of nights where you come home to an unhappy spouse.

It’s Houston Texans training camp, August 2015. The heat has graduated from absurdly unbearable to nearly lethal, the HBO Hard Knocks crew are blatantly and frequently muscling past everyone, and I’m about to run out of water. In a word, it kind of sucks.

But none of the aforementioned elements make this afternoon truly miserable. No, the most challenging, grueling aspect of my day was standing two feet away from J.J. Watt, my microphone pointed in his direction, my right thumb frantically typing tweets into my phone, and not asking him for an autograph.

Truth be told, as the weeks went on, I completely failed to keep my professional composure. After posing him a few questions one-on-one, I asked DeAndre Hopkins to sign my hat – yes, the Texans draft hat I purposefully toted with me, nestled in my bag (I collect them all, and have gotten every single one John Hancocked).

I’d spent the previous five years on the other side of the ropes, cheering my favorite players on, shouting for their attention like the rest of the masses of fans. Finally, I had complete access, a lanyard around my neck, was casually walking among the athletes, but had never felt more restricted. So I gave Whitney Mercilus a high-five anyway.

Needless to say, Doug Kyed, Tim Britton and Adam Himmelsbach would have disapproved.

Although I’d like to defend my behavior, a large part of me agrees with them. I’m not in public relations. I don’t give lip service. I can’t allow my passion to suggest such falsities as “the Texans’ secondary will be one of the league’s best.” If I start rubbing shoulders with Brian Cushing, I can’t omit the fact that his missed tackle may likely have cost the game.

Kyed advised that “riding the highs and lows” of a team can influence one’s work, and that, in order to remedy this and report accurately and fairly, all fandom must be put aside. In fact, he went so far as to say that he loses respect for his fellow reporters when they fail to do so.

According to Britton, the task of shedding one’s enthusiasm is an easy task. In his own words, “The fandom gets beat out of you.”

I suppose my question is: Do I want it to?

Allow me first to clarify. I never wish to be the reporter leaping from their seat in the press box. As Himmelsbach attests, it is, understandably, “the cardinal sin” of beat reporting.

It is also never my intention to be a “homer.” Much like the three visiting reporters attested, Trevor Solway of the Calgary Journal wrote in “Why Being a ‘Homer’ Could be Bad for Sports Broadcasting” that retaining any semblance of idolization can lead to softball questions, a decrease in journalistic integrity and even misrepresentation.

So if not those things, what, then, am I trying to say?

Following my classmate Rachel Blauner’s assessment of beat reporting through a comparison to the life of an athlete and factoring in all of the discussed sacrifices and commitments a beat reporter makes, it almost seems masochistic not to revel in the exciting times.

I can imagine myself, toiling away for years, harping on Houston’s lack of a franchise quarterback, hearing the frustration from star players. And suddenly, a legitimate shot at a deep postseason run emerges. If the team is finally getting it right, if things have well and truly turned around, how dare I not allow myself a moment of excitement to finally joyously report the state of the Texans for what it really is – a championship-caliber team?

Even something as simple as classmate Alex Smith being on-hand for the color commentary as Boston University women’s basketball dramatically notched their second win. I would never dream of passing judgement on the obvious elation in his tone.

In a sense, I fear falling out of love with the sports I hold dear. I don’t believe that any of us have selected this profession because we like the idea of the brutal lifestyle or the unimpressive pay. It’s because we can’t stop watching, analyzing, talking about, reporting on, obsessing over sports. I feel as if stripping that away would leave, well, the brutal lifestyle and the unimpressive pay. In other words, a fairly sad existence. No one wants to eat a dessert they don’t enjoy, get a sore stomach and consume an extra 1,000 calories. Much like the thrill of shaking Peyton Manning’s hand for the first time, the payoff of the diet-breaking glory is the sweet satisfaction of chowing down on some chocolate.

I’m also a firm believer in the benefits of enthusiasm. While I would undoubtedly crossly regard any reporter hamming it up with a player, congratulating them on a sensational dunk, as Himmelsbach suggested he’s seen being done, I can’t shake the thought that the response from an athlete might be improved depending on a reporter’s demeanor. Happiness is infectious. While there will be some sour moments, the players we’ll be covering are living out their dreams, and as far as I’m concerned, should I be working in sports, so too will I be. There’s no need to make monotonous something as incredible as that.

Many people regard beat reporting as one of the coolest, most enviable jobs in the world. “You know Arian Foster?!” I’ve often been asked in an astounded tone. Clearly, there’s more to it than that. I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface myself, and already I’ve experienced the sting of a snapping Bill O’Brien (a pupil in the ways of the Master of All Things Austere, Bill Belichick).

But these people aren’t wrong. I still believe that being so intimately familiar with the on-goings of a team you care about can be some of the most rewarding, exciting work. Why intentionally lose your sense of wonder?

All good things in moderation. The daily grind of beat reporting could use some spicing up. If I plan to dedicate every waking moment to something for months at a time, I better be enjoying it.

Suffice it to say that, when the time comes, I’ll be ready to ask about a missed potential game-winner, but I’ll never once try to wipe the ear-to-ear grin off of my face when I find myself standing at the Super Bowl.

I always thought beat reporting was such an ugly part of journalism. The idea of covering the same beat day after day seemed tedious and boring. But after listening to Adam, Doug, and Tim’s experiences as sports beat reporters, my mind was quickly changed and I realized I actually do want to be a beat reporter. So I guess you could say listening to their panel was a valuable experience for me!

When it comes to the good, the bad, and the ugly of beat reporting, what I was hearing from our three guests is that the good outweighs the bad and ugly. The hours are long and the work is demanding, but that is something every journalism student in their final years is acutely aware of. Covering the same team everyday has perks that other facets of sports journalism do not. You create relationships with players and they have more respect for you after seeing you there day after day. That is something we learned in our first panel too, “The Athletes and the Media.” Both the players and the journalists agreed there is an upper hand for the journalists that are there day after day; it shows they are devoted. And with that, the athletes are likely to respect you more and give you quotes they may not give to a random reporter they’ve never seen before.

Also, reporting on the same team everyday gives the reporter a chance to really know the team on a deep level and build on previous stories within the team or the season. Just that knowledge is a great advantage. Also, Doug was saying that he knew when he entered the Patriots locker room after a loss that he knew it was going to be difficult to get anybody to talk. Knowing what to expect is helpful. In classes we learn never to walk into an interview or a press conference without any background information or prior knowledge of the subject. Having prior knowledge of the subject as well as the setting is extremely valuable and allows you to just focus on the reporting without having to worry about how to adjust to the setting.

One interesting part of sports journalism that I think we have not really touched on is how to keep your composure when you’re interviewing athletes you’re a huge fan of. Vanessa talked about in her post that she found it very difficult not to ask J.J. Watt for an autograph when interviewing him and how hard was to keep her composure sometimes when star struck. I asked Adam, Doug, and Tim their opinions on what to do when you report on a team you’re a fan of, and I think it was Tim who said, “Your fandom kind of gets beaten out of you.” I can see how focusing on a specific story would distract you from being a fan of the game. Also, it didn’t seem that any of the three were huge Boston fans growing up. It would be interesting to see how a person who covers teams they grew up fans of would answer the question.

When I interned at NESN, I remember being at TD Garden for a Bruins game right across from the locker room. Zdeno Chara walked by the media room on skates and the other intern and I looked at each other in awe at how incredibly tall he is in person, about 7’0″. Then Patrice Bergeron came into the press room to do a post-game interview and I was freaking out internally that Patrice Bergeron was standing 10 feet away from me. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I was the one asking the questions. While I am sure the excitement of interviewing players you’re used to watching on TV goes away after a while, it would be useful to hear how reporters starting out managed to throw their fandom aside to get the story.

Going off that, there definitely is a danger of being biased when covering a team you’re a fan of. Even if you are personally not a fan, if you cover a specific team for a news outlet that serves a specific city, it’s difficult to remain fair and balanced in your reporting of the team. An article in the Calgary Journal refers to this as a “homer,” or a broadcaster who advocate for the team they cover. The article also touches on the danger of portraying the team and players you cover in a positive light because you’ve worked with them for so long. One of the guests commented on this when he wrote an article on a baseball player (I can’t remember his name) who’s career, he wrote, had a “startling downfall,” or something similar. He said it was harsh since he knew the player, but at the end of the day it was the truth, so he published it.

But surprisngly at the end of the Calgary Journal article it says that if you work for a regional outlet, you need to give the listeners what they want- which is flattering coverage of the home team. But, broadcasters who work on the national level should be fair and balanced. It seems that this is a violation of the ethics of journalism. Journalists are not suppossed to favor a team for any reason. But regional media companies do so that fans will watch or listen to them, which generates more money for the company. The media is twisting the rules of ethical journalism to make more money, which I understand is necessary for the journalists get paid, but it’s unfortunate that this is the case. This is something that I will definitely be asking about in future seminars. The link to the article is: http://www.calgaryjournal.ca/index.php/calgaryvoices/2983-why-being-a-homer-could-be-bad-for-sports-broadcasting

Beat reporting is obviously not all fun and games. There are perks, sure, but the perks are not undeserved. When reporting, journalists are at a game to work, not to enjoy each play. They are under tremendous amounts of pressure to produce a handful of stories on strict and timely deadlines, competing in a crowded, competitive market, against sports journalists and amateurs alike. In some cases, due to the immediacy of the world today, journalists are expected to produce final versions of their stories minutes after game time—meaning in Tim Britton’s case, he’s finishing his game story in the bottom of the 9th inning. But on games when Koji Uehara blows the save, Britton needs to be prepared to rework his lead and, more often than not, his entire story on the fly.

Because of the dynamic nature of sports, it’s obvious that beat reporters must be flexible, quick on their feet in case, say the Sox have a colossal meltdown and blow the entire game. Beat reporters must also be immensely creative—for when the offseason rolls around, reporters are still expected to produce content for their beat. But when baseball games aren’t creating new data each day in the off season, it can be a little more difficult to curate content. Britton says he frequently will rewrite stories he’s published in the past in a reinvented, and unique perspective as he evolves as a writer, and his subject evolves as a player. According to him, his next piece might be a story along the lines of “Reasons why Hanley Ramirez cannot play first base.”

On top of producing stories, another responsibility of a beat reporter is tweeting. While they’re finalizing their pregame stories and beginning their game recaps, they additionally need to live tweet during games to keep their fans up to speed with all the action. All three of our guests pointed out that although they’re required to tweet by their editors, they don’t just tweet to tweet. Rather, they tweet in order to share information about the game that fans at home wouldn’t have known otherwise.

The part of the seminar I found most interesting was when NESN’s Doug Kyed claimed that all beat reporters need to “throw their own fandom out the window in order to be successful.” This I found interesting, mainly because I disagree. I don’t see why you cannot be a fan, while still being an objective journalist. A lot of people express caution when it comes to “homers” because they think they will be less critical and less skeptical of their own teams. However, Boston fans—at least in my experience—are one of the world’s most unforgiving fan bases, and in turn, may be even more critical of the Patriots or Celtics than a non-Boston native.

Though I do agree with Kyed that a reporter’s job is “way less stressful when your team is not involved,” I don’t think you are required to abandon your fandom altogether. If “homer” reporters are able to approach their own team’s players and managerial staff with a healthy dose of skepticism, and at the same time are able to report the facts to their readers, I see not reason your fandom needs to be thrown away.

My takeaway from the seminar, was that, in Britton’s words, “you have to treat players as people, but your obligation is to your readers.” Whether that be committing extra time to responding to them on Twitter, or making sure that all of your stories are reported objectively aside from any personal biases you may have, beat reporters write for their readers.

I thought beat reporting had a boring reputation. Or maybe that was my own preconception.

A journalistic niche where a reporter follows a single topic, its daily goings on. Beat reporting seems rarely ground breaking, opinionated or telling. It is steady, factual and informational.

Adam Himmelsbach made the point that these aspects of beat reporting fulfill the most basic needs of a reader. He remarked that because of this they are essential and he thinks beat reporters will be the last newspaper jobs to disappear.

Essential. Basic. My preconception of beat reporting as boring was in line for the most part. These sports beat reporters revealed was that beat reporting is essential and basic and a daily grind. It is not luxurious or full of glamorous feature stories.

However, after this seminar I had a completely different view of sports beat reporting. Tim Britton, Doug Kyed and Adam Himmelsbach may have not known that during their panel they elevated their job in my eyes.

Sports beat reporting requires a writer to take the very basics and report them. But it also requires those basics to continually tell and advance a greater story. Depending on the sport, the reporter my have to do this every single, or at least, every other day.

This creativity and constant production of new, engaging articles takes an incredible amount of talent. I can see how beat reporting can appear boring and it may even be a pitfall for some reporters. Sports reporting more likely does not come with this caveat because of the variable nature of sports. For reporters like Britton who practically lives at Fenway Park during the baseball season, it must be going to an office every day. Things may look generally the same and move along in a similar fashion until game day.

His job then is to look past the hum drum of the daily beat and find the stories that are leading up to or after the game. Stories that could get lost since he is so used to showing up to the clubhouse and see the usual seen before the game. Now, I do not think of beat reporting as something daily but more of the long game form of journalism. These reporters are immersed in their team and they have to observe, note and report all the little things so that they can advance a larger story on game day or throughout the season.

I agree with Natalie Robson that complaining about the job you chose is not the most becoming, but I do have much more appreciation for the hard work these reporters devote to their beat and their readers daily.

Doug Kyed, Tim Britton, and Adam Himmelsbach really allowed me to see the time commitment and tedious work it takes to be a successful beat reporter. Rachel Blauner nailed it right on the head when she compared it to that of the athletes schedule. From the tireless hours without help covering high school games as a newbie to the reporting circuit, to the red-eye flights and weeks of the traveling with the pro teams the schedule is overwhelming at times. While many outsiders often mistake the relationship reporters have with the players, the job is not always as glorious as it seems.
Doug Kyed covers the New England Patriots for example, which in most peoples eyes, is the best job in the world. The way they look at it is; you get to sit in the locker room with Tom Brady or you know Chandler Jones? or how fun is it being around Gronk?”
In reality, covering the Patriots is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. The Patriot way does not allow athletes to openly talk about situations or their feelings towards other players or certain calls in a game. Doug talked about how every time he or another reporter tries to give credit to a player after a game, Bill Belichick, shoots them down and turns it into a team account. Doug gets excited about the way that reporters try and get the players and coaches to slip up and give them information.
On top of the difficulty of the pre and post game coverage, reporters are often busy typing notes, tweeting, and talking during the game. With that said, that fandom that people start the job with often gets “beaten out of you”. Adam Himmelsbach was talking about the ethics that people have and how the worst thing you can do in the media room is react to a spectacular or a crucial play of them game. For me personally, as a fan of sports, that would be extremely difficult to abide by. I get generally excited by a diving catch in the outfield or a monstrous dunk or a beautiful goal. So to be a beat reporter and have to take the emotion out of the game, that would be extremely difficult to love what I do.
A few of my classmates also touched on the social aspect of being a beat reporter. With the schedule and time constraints it is often hard to keep a relationship especially in season and spending time out with friends is often hard. While, that is the consequences of most jobs and you get what you sign up for, one of the things that my friends and I mostly bond over is watching sporting events.
With the negativity over, I actually was very intrigued by one of their jobs. Before the class started, you (Professor Shorr) asked me if I wanted to be a beat reporter and when I said no you asked why I was taking the class. My first choice of a career would be the between the periods analysis in the booth of hockey games or between the glass during the games. Personally, covering the Patriots and Celtics would not be my first choice and quite frankly it might be my last. However, after hearing Tim Britton talk about his job, it seemed very interesting. Now I am someone who really enjoys baseball, warm weather, fenway franks and an historic team. But, the thing that interested me the most was the endless things to write about during the season. There are a lot of players so, constantly you have a feature to do on a player. Also, players are a lot more talkative and at ease around the media. Especially if you realize baseball is your passion and you start in the minor leagues and build a relationship early with a player. Then you can get sit downs and juicy quotes for your story. Finally, there are so many turns of a baseball game and the ninth inning always allows you to finish your ideas for a story or can reroute you into a different story with a blown save or walk off home-run. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind covering spring training in Florida to get away from the atrocious weather that Boston blesses the people with.

In Trevor Solway’s article “Why being a homer could be bad for sports broadcasting,” he writes, “The term homer refers to home broadcasters who advocate for the team they cover.” When the three beat reporters were asked about supporting a team that they cover, the reporters all had strikingly similar answers. They explained that when you enter this business you have to throw that fandom right out the window. Rooting for the team the reporter covers or any team at that can get in the way of the work they need to get done. Their job is to get the story right and if that story deals with bashing on one of their favorite players then so be it. This is what is asked of them and no matter what they have to say the truth.

The three beat reporters showed us that in this business there are many things that are sacrificed. When Sara asked, “How do you separate your personal life from your work life?” they all said that this was the hardest thing to do. Doug explained that during the week it’s tough to maintain a social life. Doug further stressed that he only had time to maintain friendships during four to five months out of the year. Adam had gone as far to say, “that the season has cost some relationships.” The beat reporters stress that you have to be willing to make these sacrifices if you want to succeed in this business. Although I am not an aspiring beat reporter, the reporter’s insight into their daily lives definitely gave me a different perspective on my own goals and the job I want to pursue. I started to think about the sacrifices that I will have to make in order to pursue my dream. However, I do not think I will know if I will be able to make the same sacrifices they made until I get into that position. I can definitely say it now but who knows where I will be when I have to make those decisions.

When asked about how important versatility was to beat reporting, Tim said, “It is going from being a luxury on the resume to being an expectation.” The beat reporters explained that knowing how to use a video camera is as important as knowing how to do the job you are supposed to do. When they talked about this it hit me hard because this was the exact reason I decided to take JO 532. Unlike most of the students in the class, I want to go into sports production. I chose to take the class to because I felt that I needed to know more about the other side of the industry so I could be more versatile and have a better understanding of what journalists are seeing and doing. Hearing from them that they needed to know how to use a camera and how they need to know how to make their sound actually sound good made me realize that in addition to having a strong production background, I need to have a journalistic eye. For example, last week in class, we discussed the growing importance of online journalism.

The three beat reporters discussed the importance of Twitter, and how they utilize this social networking service. “I try not to be annoying during the game on Twitter. Live feeding is boring info and clogs the feed. You want it to be something that makes it different since you are there and they are not. You want them to want to engage with you and then they start to read more about you,” said Adam. Each reporter agreed on the necessity of Twitter, but also said that is not critical to live “Tweet” throughout the entirety of the game.

The content that a reporter provides should be stuff the viewers can only see if their at the game not a play by play. Twitter has also become a starting point for their stories. Adam talked about how sometimes reporters will see something big that a Yahoo Insider tweets and from there we start working to confirm that it’s real. It is interesting to learn the impact that social media has made from the reporters as it truly proves how much journalism has evolved. This directly ties back to our class discussion last week.

Twitter has made such a big impact on the journalism world but like Adam said it is a start. It should not be a place where we can put up false information then take it down with real information a tweet later. Adam is smart and uses it as a place to start his stories because he knows that information is not always true. As the NBA trade deadline approaches I have seen how much trouble Facebook and Twitter posts have caused. For example, there has been a lot of controversy on whether the Los Angeles Clippers, Blake Griffin will be traded although, head coach Doc Rivers, has clearly stated Griffin will not be traded.

“I’ve told you we’re not trading Blake, but I guess everyone else wants to keep doing that. So we’ll let them do that,” Rivers said Tuesday before practice. “It is what it is. Nothing we can do about it, honestly. It frustrates you when you know nothing’s going on, but what can you do?”

There is an extensive variety of posts on these social media outlets that all say different things and that’s why their needs to be a point where enough is enough. Rivers clearly states it here when he says, that everyone wants to keep this going on even though nothing is going to happen. And as I continue to scroll through the social media outlets I keep seeing it, “Blake Griffin possible landing spots,” or “Blake Griffin to be traded.” Adam said it best, twitter is just a starting point then you go out and find the evidence to confirm it. However, in this case the evidence has been found and yet the media feels like they need to keep going with it.

These reporters showed that there is so much that goes into being a beat reporter and that there are many sacrifices that need to be but in the end it’s worth it. They all have that two minutes period where they are at the highest level of anxiety possible trying to get the story or the starting lineup up before anyone else. They all had to gain experience from the terrible conditions of high school beat reporting and awkward moments where they may have made the person they’re interviewing cry but that’s what drives them. They dealt with all those ugly and terrible moments so that when they reach that success they have been striving so long for it feels so good.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14789230/los-angeles-clippers-trade-blake-griffin-according-doc-rivers

http://www.calgaryjournal.ca/index.php/calgaryvoices/2983-why-being-a-homer-could-be-bad-for-sports-broadcasting

Beat writing, as many of my classmates have already said, seemed like a pretty boring job before our seminar. Thanks to our panelists, I have a somewhat changed outlook on the job.

In beat writing, the most important asset you have is getting time with players. I thought it was valuable when Tim shared that in Pawtucket is where he “builds [his] relationships” with the players who eventually make it up to the Red Sox. For me, a journalism profession is about telling stories, getting information from a source that will bring an issue to light or make a reader think differently about a subject or idea. I find athletes to be among some of the most dedicated and fascinating (for better or for worse) people in society, and I can’t help but want to tell their stories. So it was comforting to hear from Tim that players are willing to talk with him and he is able to build those relationships with players early on in their careers. It would be daunting to have to go cover a professional team that is as tight-lipped as Doug said the Patriots are without having built any prior relationships with players.

I agree with Rachel and Dakota who said in their comments that our panelists’ jobs remind them of the dedication it takes to be an athlete. To be a beat writer, you have to have passion for telling stories and a drive as most, if not all, athletes have. Athletes have stayed in budget motels, eaten low quality fast food and woken up before the sun more often than we would like to remember. I believe the same lifestyle is expected of beat writers, and the experience we have as athletes ourselves makes it easier to relate to the players we may be covering who have had similar experiences.

Tim brought up a frustration which taught me something valuable. He said that it can be “frustrating when athletes lump all media people together and don’t distinguish between TMZ and guys who are trying to ask good questions.” Being mistaken for another media outlet who doesn’t have the greatest reputation would be extremely frustrating to me, as well. Now, Vanessa brought up the idea of not wanting the fandom to get beat out of you and I think her thought and Tim’s frustration tie together. If you are going to be working as a beat reporter and you’re competing with a more amateur media outlet for time with players, it’s imperative to distinguish yourself as a professional. The last thing you want is to be overlooked or lumped in with other outlets. In doing so, you would rarely get information different from that of the average newspaper or sports website. I believe it’s incredibly important to remain professional regardless of your interest in a particular team and take your personal taste out of the equation. We’re already fighting for player access time, so to be anything less than professional would be damaging to our jobs.

I asked the panelists about their view and future of sites like The Players’ Tribune. Unfortunately, players have been essentially getting good PR through the site, and Tim said the site does “not [have] skeptical writers”. The panelists agreed that there will probably be more sites popping up like this in the near future, but that the sustainability of the sites is questionable. For beat writers, this must be a challenging force to reckon with, seeing as though many players will not say much the the reporter other than the pre-packaged answers they have been trained to give, but will willingly volunteer access to their lives in order for the Players’ Tribune piece to be written. I am a little more skeptical than the panelists because I do see that readers are engaged by the Players’ Tribune. They like getting that seemingly exclusive access to their favorite players, regardless of the subjectivity of the multimedia piece or article. Hopefully, though, readers will soon realize that getting that access to a player’s life causes the information to be skewed and the line between objective and subjective perceptions to be blurred. Then, they will fall back on beat writers to dish out the facts and, just as Adam predicts, beat writers, “will be the last jobs at the paper to go.”