Recent content by BrendaStarr

Unless it was the offseason, I can't say I've ever had to go through a player's or team's publicist to get access to them for a profile or longer piece. That's why there's locker room/clubhouse access and availability, especially if you're someone who is on a beat and covering the team regularly...

Finally saw Carol (2015) -- hard to believe it wasn't nominated for Best Picture. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara were as good as advertised and certainly worthy of their Oscar nominations. Two thumbs up!

Outside of Bears, Bulls and Cubs, ESPN Chicago is otherwise predominately wire stories at this point. Two of their former writers/columnist are now lead writers at The Athletic Chicago.

Reading male journalists' perspectives on this situation has certainly been interesting. I feel like a lot of people, inside and outside the industry, would be surprised by how frequently these kinds of things happen to female sports reporters. A little disappointing to see it's involving...

The problem is that those "sheep" often harass people, particularly women in sports media, quite frequently on Twitter and can be unrelenting. So to say that others "really can't, and shouldn't, be bothered by it" is not feasible and is a daily reality for some people. If anything, the story did...

There's also a big difference between someone writing a story that will appear in a player's college alumni magazine and the positive impact that could have for an NBA team and a random, perhaps smaller, publication that the OP alluded he was writing for. And obviously, every league/pro team is...

If this professional player has ties to your community that means your paper/company probably covered him when he was younger and a star in high school so shouldn't you have a way to get a hold of him through him through family/friends? Honestly, your best bet is to contact his former high...

I don't think people here are arguing that you shouldn't keep any stats, rather which stats to keep track of. Obviously you're going to keep track of points scored and likely turnovers and rebounds. The argument is whether you should be trying to also track shooting percentage, etc. on top of...

Whenever I cover high school basketball games, I keep a running play-by-play using shorthand, which helps me keep track of turnovers and scoring runs. I typically jot down the time in the game baskets were scored too, which was helpful when I covered a game where a team failed to score a basket...

You're forgetting one of the most negative aspects of blogs, at least to me and other writers I know on my beat: When blogs aggregate content. Few things annoy me more. It's a regular occurrence with blogs that write about the team I cover taking something I got exclusively that's in a story I...

On the flip side, beat writers also need some down time in the offseason of their respective sport so I'd argue that having content every single day of the offseason is very unrealistic. Even if it's writing a list-type story. You need to have a life outside this 24/7 job. With your baseball...

This is true at my paper. A story that's a bulleted list of five players with a corresponding explanation on who the team should target in free agency easily gets more reads/hits than a story on a big hiring/firing. People love it and creates reader engagement so I typically try to do a story...

Rough day today for journalists, including in the sports department, in Philly: @MLBURNEY: PMN announces layoffs: 17 employees at Daily News, 17 at Phillydotcom and 12 at Inquirer. @TNGLocal10 reviewing and deciding next steps.

Nope, no buyouts will be offered according to the publisher: Philadelphia Media Network CEO Egger announces cuts, newsroom merger Further complicating things is that this is a union shop. So I don't think it's a safe guarantee that younger reporters are safe.

Unless it's a situation that Ethier had thought over before the play happened or previously discussed with Dodgers coaches on what to do in that kind of situation, in the moment you're going to go with your instincts and make the catch. That foul ball situation happened too quickly to truly...