Reporters want to believe that every story they do is a big one, the most important, the lead…Sadly for their egos, that’s not always the case…<\/p>\n
Big stories come in two sizes, breaking and scheduled events…Falling in the latter category would be the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the Boston Marathon…O.J. Simpson’s Bronco chase and “Deflategate” are examples of breaking news…And as a reporter, how you react to both of these may very well determine how far you go in the news business…<\/p>\n
Tom E. Curran of NBS Sports Boston and MLB.Com’s Mark Feinsand joined us recently at the Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar Series, veterans of these situations…Curran, in fact, is right in the middle of the Tim Brady\/Bill Belichick chaos even as we speak…<\/p>\n
The close to the vest New England Patriots are being bombarded for information…Everyone wants the nugget, everyone wants to be first…Feinsand covered the New York Yankees for sixteen years before he became a national reporter…How much bigger does it get?<\/p>\n
Let’s face it, fans in New York and Boston can’t get enough about their teams…They genuinely rely on Curran and Feinsand for the behind scenes lowdown…Sometimes it’s overwhelming…”You’re not the only reporters they’re (the players)\u00a0 talking to” Feinsand told the students…”You’re not going to have every story first”…<\/p>\n
Curran started, as may of you will, on a small paper, The Barnstable Patriot,\u00a0<\/em> before moving to the MetroWest Daily<\/em> and eventually the Providence Journal<\/em>… Before he did sports he was a general assignment reporter covering, among other things, Water Department meetings…There probably wasn’t a crowd of reporters circling after the meeting for quotes…But Curran learned how to get that inside information when the time came and he wasn’t the only one looking for answers; “Keep your phone against your ear; it’s diligence, it’s texts, emails, developing a reputation that you can be trusted.”…Not all of you want to be on air or day to day reporters but if you read those words from Curran don’t they apply to anything<\/em> you want to do and not just reporting?<\/p>\n <\/em>Much of that is the prep work, the work and the hours you have to put in so you’re ready when it’s your turn…Feinsand set things up perfectly when he said “Know your audience, and put the people there”…In essence, they already know who won, who had the big hit, the goal, the touchdown, but put them at the game…A first cousin to my cardinal rules, “advance the story”, “tell ’em something they don’t already know” and “tell the story of the game through the pictures you use”…<\/p>\n The best part about covering a big story is the rush you get in doing a good job…It could be the quote no one else has, the piece of information you got from player who trusted you…But the adrenaline of working on deadline will make you a better reporter…You’ll learn that being sent out on a story requires one skill set while working an event calls for another…<\/p>\n They’re not all big, but it’s your job to make it big for someone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reporters want to believe that every story they do is a big one, the most important, the lead…Sadly for their egos, that’s not always the case… Big stories come in two sizes, breaking and scheduled events…Falling in the latter category would be the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the Boston Marathon…O.J. Simpson’s Bronco chase and “Deflategate” […]<\/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\/484"}],"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=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}