{"id":286,"date":"2015-03-22T13:31:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T17:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=286"},"modified":"2015-03-22T13:31:21","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T17:31:21","slug":"if-that-dont-beat-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2015\/03\/22\/if-that-dont-beat-all\/","title":{"rendered":"If That Don’t Beat All!"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a hierarchy to sports journalism jobs and while you might think beat reporting is all fancy hotels and charter flights, think again….it’s not a place where you start, maybe not even a place you finish but with apologies to Charles Dickens, it can be “the best of times,\u00a0the worst of times”<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Who doesn’t want to cover a team?…after all, it’s why we start covering the high schools, the little leagues, the minors…<\/p>\n

ESPNBoston.com’s Mike Reiss<\/a> and Tony Massarotti<\/a> of 98.5 The Sports Hub visited the B-U sports journalism seminar series just recently and while this seminar may be as far away from the students as last week’s was close (Newcomers<\/a>), the sense was, this is as professional as it gets…<\/p>\n

Both Tony and Mike started when covering sports was a much more traditional, non twitter, non-internet era…Writing for a newspaper was the plum job and being able to follow one team all the time was the cherry on the sundae…Interestingly, both had external factors that shaped their fates…in Mike’s case he’d beat the bushes and thought he was on his way working for Patriots Football Weekly\u00a0<\/a>…But when he applied for other jobs, he found out that working for the team wasn’t exactly advancing his cause; “It was a dues paying process to remove myself from that P.R. track, said Reiss, and move to the journalism track and then work my way back up.”…Having his checks signed by the team he was covering proved problematic he found…<\/p>\n

For Massarotti, it wasn’t so much the beat that changed things, but rather the fortunes of the local teams he covered, his beat at 98.5 now being more than just the Red Sox but pretty much anything; “There was an astonishing amount of good fortune involved. \u00a0We(he and partner Mike Felger) have been lucky enough to work in what’s undoubtedly the golden age of Boston Sports. \u00a0There’s never been a run like this in any city in America, ever! \u00a0That’s dumb luck, nothing more than that.”<\/p>\n

But as much as Reiss and Massarotti put in the hours and forged the relationships, it was their ability to adapt as beat reporters that advanced their careers, especially Reiss…Nobody could imagine what “that internet thing” would turn into back in the 90’s when Reiss decided he could take advantage of the immediacy of the new technology and get his brand out there…He wasn’t exactly embraced by his fellow journalists however; “Why are you doing that? \u00a0You’re creating extra work for all of us”, they complained. \u00a0“I just want to file my story and go home” they would say. \u00a0“My whole idea on that was why wait until tomorrow to read something i can tell you right now?”…Reiss was light years ahead of his peers. \u00a0One of the early models of advancing the story.<\/p>\n

Like every other reporter doing his\/her job, Massarotti and Reiss had to wind their way through the muck and mire of information…some of it good, much of it useless and unchecked….But both agreed, they weren’t in it to beat the drum for someone else; “Why are they telling me (this)? \u00a0You should never underestimate that someone is carrying out some sort of agenda on their behalf too, stated Massarotti. \u00a0You’re kind of using each other and everybody understands it and it’s ok.”<\/p>\n

Consummate pros for sure, hard workers by trade and choice. \u00a0They both truly understand what it takes to “march to a different beat”, “It’s a volume job, Massarotti told the students, it’s how I would describe a beat reporters job, it’s hard work. \u00a0It doesn’t mean that the quality of the work you’re turning out is any less valuable (though). There’s a lot of it, it’s demanding.” \u00a0While agreeing, \u00a0Reiss wanted to make sure the students didn’t lose their passion along the way; \u00a0“Think like a fan. \u00a0You have a press pass and access to people that anyone would want (access to) so ask them what you think a fan would want to know.”<\/p>\n

Sage advice. You can’t beat that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a hierarchy to sports journalism jobs and while you might think beat reporting is all fancy hotels and charter flights, think again….it’s not a place where you start, maybe not even a place you finish but with apologies to Charles Dickens, it can be “the best of times,\u00a0the worst of times”… Who doesn’t want […]<\/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\/286"}],"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=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}