Best journalism advice/tips you ever received

One of my favorite things I learned here is to keep your quotes tight. Don't lead into the quote with a paraphrasing of the quote.

Johnson thinks it is going to be a game between two evenly-matched teams.
"This is going to be a game between two evenly-matched teams," Johnson said.

 

I think limiting quotes altogether is good advice. They are such crutches, I tend to skim over them in stories now. You are gathering information, not harvesting quotes.

 

"People at most care 10 inches about softball"

This wasn't so valuable in simply telling me to stop writing 18 inches about softball, it was a reminder of how wrapped a reporter can get in things.

I could write 25 inches on a particularly quirky high school game between a couple mediocre teams. But only a tiny number of folks care. Often as journalists, we dig into what we cover, and sometimes we have to step back and realize what matters to people who read. (It's probably a valuable lesson in covering local politics and such).

 

I've been trying to get my bosses to understand the "what people care about" concept for years. Not all local teams deserve equal coverage. Every byline doesn't need to be on Page 1. If it's a crappy game but it's the only thing local/with a byline, that's not reason enough to put it on 1.

 

This. This. One-thousand times this. (Even if I don't obey it enough)

 

(I apologize if this starts here and veers off)

They might be circumventing those coaches and players, but at this juncture I don't know if it's per say a bad thing. We've been covering sports for more than a century. People who get/give good insight, the kind of really nuanced explanation for the why that particular thing happened, for how the emotions and wills and trust and loyalty mattered, those people have been few and far between. In the modern era, there are too many voices, too many questions, too many reporters badgering a finite number of people who actually know in moments where maybe they don't fully have a grasp on it. You also have the factor that people don't like being challenged. Most often athletes and coaches don't really want to explain. They often just want us to leave.

Last year I had a moment like this. I was trying to get at a particular thing about a touchdown drive a team gave up (late in the half it got marched on quickly, with a defense that seemed built to trade yards for time). The player I asked answered they won, and he's not focused on the negative. The coach later gives me a little sass, then sort of answers with vagaries, interesting ones, but not direct answers. Maybe a question could be phrased better, maybe I can get in good follow ups and explain if I'm not in a gaggle or presser, but the current state of the reporter/athlete relationship often doesn't allow for that. Ironically the coach gave a fantastically detailed answer to, why did your defense play better in the second half?

At this point, it's fair to say we have a better grip on the workings of sports than ever before. We have writers who study the game, who use that to ask better questions and explain things better. And yes, we have numbers, which often helps us see the game in better, smarter ways (they often just create a structure for the feel of the game, which in itself is useful). I think the "thank you for not coaching" stuff is a bit cheap, a flashy, snarky headline to draw people to what could be mostly dry analysis. It ironically feels like mostly a more grounded version of what Gregg Easterbrook did long before Barnwell, granted Gregg's was more on feel than study. I don't think Barnwell's career is built on shitting on coaches, it's more about looking at things from a different view than fans have, in some ways, in a way closer to how coaches view things. With some shitting on coaches obviously.

(This is too long. I'll save examples of a coach who didn't quite have the way to explain himself and the newspaper reporter who could talk to everyone but lacked the right kind of curiosity for another day)

 

Yeah, I've been too often guilty of breaking this "rule."

This is a good one. It definitely is easy to feel like what you're covering is the most important thing in sports that day, which is a good thing. We should all be passionate and dedicated, but we're not writing so we can enjoy the story. We're writing for the readers.

 

But then you get the passive-aggressive phone calls and emails from parents wondering why you don't give their team/sport the same coverage as another team/sport.

 

Lots of good stuff here. Here's one I give to college students who write for their school papers:

Get out and cover something. Cover a game. Do a feature. You're right there on campus and the opportunities are there to do good, original work. No one gives a shit about your NBA preview or your take on the pennant race or your fantasy football team. Do the work. Get some experience. Get some clips.