<\/p>\n
It’s not enough to report the scores and quote the athletes in the 2013 world of sports journalism, you’ve got to be more engaging, more compelling…You’ve got to give them a reason to come back…Michael Felger<\/a> of ComcastSportsnet New England<\/a> and Tanya Ray Fox<\/a>, who writes for She’s Games Sports <\/a>and SB Nation<\/a> as well as running the assignment desk at CSSNE, \u00a0joined us at a Sports Journalism Seminar recently and when asked directly if he thought he was a journalist or an entertainer, Felger candidly responded, “entertainer, no question about it”…Now, that’s a pretty stark admission for someone who went to Journalism school, had an internship and cut his teeth at a Boston daily, the Boston Herald and worked as the lead reporter covering the Bruins followed by a beat reporter job following the New England Patriots<\/span><\/p>\n But Felger, if nothing else, has adapted…he understands where his audience is and he embraces it… In embracing that attitude, Felger often times runs afoul of the people he covers…”It’s all about be supportive(of the athletes)”, says Felger, who doesn’t think it’s always necessary to be at the game to be credible…”They’ll say how do you know, all you do is sit in a studio all day. Well, \u00a0I don’t want to be there, so some guy can take me in the corner and spin me so I say nice things about him, that just defeats the purpose.”<\/p>\n The Nieman Journalism Lab<\/a> ran a piece recently entitled The Newsonomics of Big Sports Money – and News<\/em> in which Ken Doctor<\/a> proposes that sportswriters have a new credo, the coverage mantra sounds like readers-first: \u201cHow are we going to cover for the fans, in such a way that they are accustomed to trusting and believing and expecting….” By “expecting” I would offer he means “entertaining” …<\/span><\/p>\n Fox worries that ownership deals may sway coverage as well….Boston Red Sox Owner John Henry just bought The Boston Globe<\/em>…that’s not a unique situation in the sports journalism world anymore….Won’t that slant coverage?…””It’s exponential, \u00a0says Fox, sports journalism can’t lose everything about it that’s newsworthy. There’s always going to be games and there’s always going to be someone to report it. I don’t know i it’s going to be beat reporters, people who tweet, I don’t know how it’s going to progress…”<\/p>\n “What’s sports coverage for?, asks Doctor, is it journalism, covering a team, a league and its athletes the way journalists cover mayors, presidents and business leaders? Or is it simply a means of promotion?”…..<\/p>\n Whatever it is, it’s going to be competitive and the new breed of sports journalists had better figure out how to reach their audience…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s not enough to report the scores and quote the athletes in the 2013 world of sports journalism, you’ve got to be more engaging, more compelling…You’ve got to give them a reason to come back…Michael Felger of ComcastSportsnet New England and Tanya Ray Fox, who writes for She’s Games Sports and SB Nation as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}