The lost art of the 'gamer'

Amen. A straight play-by-play gamer can be terrible, but it still needs to be informative. In my mind, I'm writing for the person who is interested in how things played out but couldn't make it to the game for whatever reason. That means hitting the highlights, picking up the action at a critical juncture, giving some final stats, and trying to give some insight into what led to all of those points through descriptive writing or quotes.
The person I'm writing for on Friday night might be interested in a deep dive on Podunk's blocking scheme, but I don't have time or space to do that on deadline. That's another story on another day. The gamer is a highlights package. It doesn't have to be awful, and it doesn't have to be an exercise in showing how much of an insider you can sound like. Elements of the latter can creep in, but when you dwell on it it's easy to bog down in that and make an editor want to cave in your skull with a keyboard.

What's helped us, I think, is to almost break our football gamers into two parts. We have a more traditional gamer that we run on Friday that has all of the things I mentioned above. Then we try to do a follow-up that runs on Monday or Tuesday that is more of a feature/analysis/trend piece that bridges the gap between the last gamer and the next week's preview story. It can be a feature on the star player, or something about a recent trend.
It works well and gives us something to run early in the week while the football cycle resets itself.

 

Since twitter is probably non-negotiable at my shop, I've found it's just replaced the second sheet I used to take down details for scores. It's a hint less efficent as it lacks conversion details, but is 90 percent as good. Granted, I only tweet scores and quarter updates. People who want to tweet play-by-play can screw off. (Since I also shoot video, I've found some perks in having a chance to watch something over, even if it makes the sideline life a bit hectic).

Maybe others have a different experience, but I've always found the majority of what I do in-game is about preparing a box score, with gamer stuff working around that. Like that's the first thing I make sure I'm on top of. With 11 p.m. deadlines at my last two shops, it honestly also takes a lot of the time after the game anyway, reducing the ability to produce a "proper" gamer.

(I really like the phrase "process of preparing a gamer" and the idea of proper play-by-play for some reason. It strikes me that the first would often involve less of the second. Obviously there's a range of ways to keep stats and the depth of that adds or detracts from the attention you pay to anything else. I've been at places that asked for team punting average and first down, which are only occasionally meaningful/useful and the first of which is oddly distracting. For basketball, I've been asked to track field goal attempts, which can be interesting but takes you out of the flow of the game, and team rebound totals, which is a functionally useless number)

 

Still, somebody has to keep the stats. The team's statkeeper isn't reliable on the h.s. level. Ever tried to keep stats at a h.s. game? It's tough! I could see maybe catching your breath and tweeting something at the end of the quarters and maybe during a time out or two but ....

 

What audience are you reaching with any form of a game story? Even the old SI style game stories from major events, the ones that were reported and written masterfully, aren't relevant.

This column from Dan Wetzel from the Alabama-Texas championship game in 2010 should be the blueprint - Agonizing night for Texas QBs

Yes, few of us can write and get access like Wetzel. But the approach is the right idea.

Tell readers what they don't know. Everyone who cared already knew that Alabama beat Texas that night. They watched on TV, followed along online. And if they didn't, they have the AP recap. That's true for every college and pro game. Give the readers something they can't get from the wire.

But I think outlets are even more stubborn at the high school level. The vast majority of readers who care were at the game. Give them something they didn't see from the stands.

Any gamer details should be reduced to 100 words or less. Save space for something worthwhile.

 

Why are you writing for such a small audience? If 1,000 people showed up the game, there are probably less than 100 who missed out and want details. Meanwhile, you're ignoring the 1,000 who were there and want more info than what they observed.

Not having time on deadline isn't a writer's fault. It's the editor and publisher. Because they're still catering to print, which shouldn't be the priority. Maybe Gannett moving to 730 deadlines or whatever the time is will help shake that mentality out of people. Write for the web.

Why are you waiting 72-96 hours to share more details about Friday night? Wouldn't your readers be better served to have some of the information you're saving for Tuesday on Friday? Or Saturday?

Reduce the gamer to a brief and write something more in depth Friday night. Or if the newspaper stupidly insists on a full gamer, move the folo to Saturday, take Monday off and then move ahead with other stories during the week.

 

Yeah, I've always kept my stats and notekeeping as a priority ahead of Tweeting, especially at a high school game when I know the coach will do stats off the game tape, then send them to Maxpreps. I usually tweet on changes of possessions: "Podunk's drive stalled near midfield. Podunk Tech ball, first-and-10 on its own 22." If a drive has legs, I'll throw in some details and, if it's coming to a thrilling conclusion, I'll go straight play-by-play.

 

Our ideas about game coverage are diametrically different. But you're probably still in the business, and I'm not. You obviously buy what they're selling, and that's to your credit.

As for me, when I go to a high school game, I look forward to seeing the gamer on it the next day or online.

 

I thought the only people who cared anything about what I do were already at the game?
Does anyone care? Why do we do this at all then? Who am I? Where am I?

But we still have a deadline to hit. And a space limit for print. Once they do kill the print edition, then I will write for the web. Until then, I have 600 words of space and two hours to write them, take another call-in or two and write those, and slap it all on the page.

We wait 72-96 hours because:
A) Sunday's paper is full of college football. More of those apparently useless gamers and pretty pictures of games that no one cares about.
B) I actually like having Sunday off or as a slow day.
C) Not a whole lot happens on Sunday and Monday, locally or nationally. The week is resetting, we're running around doing interviews for next week's games, there's some national stuff to fill gaps (like NFL and NASCAR), and it's a good spot to run the more in-depth follow-ups. It gives us a chance to get some work done without running us ragged.
D) When it comes to football -- and that's what we're talking about here -- nothing in the week between games is really stale if you write it the right way. Take one element of the last game or a trend (Podunk allowed 200-plus rushing yards for the third week in a row) and explore it. Write a feature on a player that highlights the last game but also talks about his season to date.

There's a dozen ways to do it and keep it fresh. You can write two or three of them if you have the material. Meanwhile, that frees you up to write about the actual game on Friday night because -- big reveal here -- the only reason people give a shit about what happens in practice, the matchups, the in-depth stuff, all of it, is because they give a shit about what happens when the team plays a game.
The anti-gamer crowd always forgets that last part. It's like they think the roster battle for the third-string left guard position, and how the winner does in practice is why people soak up information on a football team.

 

Wait, really?

 

I think he means two hours to do EVERYTHING--write a gamer, compile recaps, paginate, eat, poop, Tweet. Wait. Those last three would be me.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. I usually get back to the office around 10, and have until 12 to write one (and often 2 or 3) stories, paginate, proofread, etc.
The last two weeks I've only had to write one story and it's felt like I'm slacking off.

 

Jesus Christ, there are places that play JV before varsity on Fridays? There's a special place in Hell for whoever thought that was OK.