{"id":397,"date":"2017-03-07T12:43:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T17:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=397"},"modified":"2017-03-07T12:43:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T17:43:54","slug":"we-got-the-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2017\/03\/07\/we-got-the-beat\/","title":{"rendered":"We Got the Beat"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I wrote maybe 14, 15 stories throughout the game”…What, how many?…”Some of them were 5, 600 hundred words, others after the game were in the thousands”…<\/p>\n

Such is the life of a modern day beat writer, in this case Zack Cox<\/a> of NESN, who covers the New England Patriots (and was referring to February 5th at Super Bowl LI)…<\/p>\n

If I were to relate that story to legendary beat reporters Bob Ryan<\/a> of the Globe (Red Sox, Celtics), The Patriot Ledger’s Ron Hobson <\/a>(Patriots) or Joe Fitzgerald<\/a>, former beat writer for the Boston Herald, they would cringe…<\/p>\n

Now maybe it was the enormity of the game\/day but still, the days of watching the game and writing a game story, even editing a (video) package for the news or gathering soundbites for post game radio are long gone…It’s constant now and even though viewers are watching the game or listening to the game, they want more…They want the person covering the game to fill them in with the little details that are going on right now, details the viewers can’t see or hear…<\/p>\n

Cox joined Phil Perry<\/a> of Comcast SportsNet recently at the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series and while I expected to hear about long(er) hours , tweeting and learning to deal with Bill Belichick, I was floored by the amount of work that comes out of these guys on a daily basis, in season or out…<\/p>\n

Beat reporting season don’t end anymore and the competition is rough…Baseball plays a hundred and sixty two regular season games, football, but 16…That’s a big difference and the physical grind isn’t close…But the requirements are pretty much the same no matter what the day…<\/p>\n

And an added duty now, almost an obligation for any beat writer is to be an “opinion maker”…Fans know the facts, they’ve seen the game…They want to know what you think about it…They also want you to agree with them…”It’s difficult to write opinion well, mentioned Perry, \u00a0but in a lot of ways it’s harder to go out and find a story and make that work for you. \u00a0You have to go, you have to talk to people, you have to make phone calls, you have to develop relationships. \u00a0There’s something to be said for that.”…<\/p>\n

Another issue that has changed with the landscape is breaking stories…once upon a time, sports editors (and news directors) expected their beat reporters to be first with any kind of news…Not so much the case anymore…”Whether you’re a team or an agent of a coach, said Perry, it’s so much easier to call a national guy and get your message out to the rest of the world”… Cox added, “It’s almost a bit of a surprise when you see someone locally breaks it before the big time reporters. \u00a0They’re so plugged in”…Needless to say the local reporters hate getting beat but it happens more often than not…<\/p>\n

It may not be the plumb job, the higher rung on the ladder, but beat reporting is still the best way for fans to be connected…<\/p>\n

Leave it to Bill Belichick to sum things up…”No Days Off”, “No Days Off”, “No Days Off”….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I wrote maybe 14, 15 stories throughout the game”…What, how many?…”Some of them were 5, 600 hundred words, others after the game were in the thousands”… Such is the life of a modern day beat writer, in this case Zack Cox of NESN, who covers the New England Patriots (and was referring to February 5th […]<\/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\/397"}],"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=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}