{"id":253,"date":"2013-11-16T09:43:14","date_gmt":"2013-11-16T14:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=253"},"modified":"2013-11-16T09:43:14","modified_gmt":"2013-11-16T14:43:14","slug":"dont-let-the-stars-get-in-your-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2013\/11\/16\/dont-let-the-stars-get-in-your-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

With apologies to Perry Como<\/a>, walking into a professional locker room can be daunting…these are the guys you’ve idolized and now you actually have to talk to them, you have to initiate the conversation….no question it can be scary but armed with a few simple guidelines, it can be navigated…<\/p>\n

Ian Browne<\/a> of MLB.com and Celtics forward Kelly Olynyk<\/a> took students through the process recently at the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series and the candor with which they did was assuring…”Try to get to know each guy and put them at ease because when they trust you, it makes your job so much easier… rather than being the guy who’s digging for dirt, let them know you’re the guy they can talk to and you’re not gonna burn them” \u00a0said Browne, a veteran of baseball locker rooms, perhaps the toughest to work of all our major sports…<\/p>\n

But that doesn’t mean when it comes time to ask the hard question, you have to shy away….And you know what , the athletes know those questions are coming and they’ll be there to take the heat. Browne had a simple rule to go by: \u00a0“phrase it in a way that they are not threatened by it, you want to tell your readers what was going on or him(the player)”…<\/p>\n

Easily the night funniest exchange came when i asked Olynyk if the players actually liked<\/em> being interviewed even though they know it comes with the territory…”We play three, four times a week, said Olynyk, so let’s say this, (your) class was M-W-F…if I came M-W-F before each of your classes and asked ‘so, how was that test yesterday? (laughter)…I see you missed question six, it was obviously ‘A’ and you chose ‘C’, why do you think you did that? (more laughter)…was there some problem with the textbook, the teacher didn’t do a great job?…and then you go to Wednesday’s class, before class, (and i ask), so you’ve done great on two tests but you bombed the third one, do you think you were a little overconfident?…it’s every day, every day you don’t mind it but it’s just sometimes it’s a little overwhelming, some days you just don’t want to talk about test number 17!”(still more laughter)…<\/p>\n

Whether it’s high school kids, college stars or professional players, you’re going to have to interact with them…treating them with respect will get you a long way and better yet, get your questions answered…how can you lose?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With apologies to Perry Como, walking into a professional locker room can be daunting…these are the guys you’ve idolized and now you actually have to talk to them, you have to initiate the conversation….no question it can be scary but armed with a few simple guidelines, it can be navigated… Ian Browne of MLB.com and […]<\/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\/253"}],"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=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}