WNBA Beat Reporters

Do Arena League teams get beat reporter coverage?

 

I know the Sacramento Bee and LA Times have fulltimers covering their WNBA teams. Don't know if they travel anymore, but they used to.

 

Some do some don't. When I was at the LA Avenger game a guy from the LA Daily News was on press row, but when I picked up the paper no story. They did not print the story in the paper but posted it online.

 

Thanks for the advice, FOAF, but I've been around long enough to know Mizzou is good people, even if not everyone likes him.

Plus, if I ignored everyone who offended me on here, what would I have to read?

 

To tell you the truth I would like to cover the WNBA as well. I actually think you will learn more and get better clips if you cover a professional league that not to many metro paper's care enough about to actually place a full time writer on the beat. This could also help in regards to possibly getting a byline or two in that metro paper.

I actually enjoy women's basketball more then I do the NBA or NCAA men's basketball because it looks to me like they actually want to play and enjoy it.

Also since we are talking about basketball does anyone know a paper that cover's the NBA D-League?

 

Yep.

 

I covered women's pro basketball, an early pro league (WBL) that didn't last very long. And while I truly loved that job -- the players actually seemed happy to see you and were generally more cooperative than men, which is a novelty -- I really think it does not very much for your career. Except in a few markets, nobody gives a crap. Editors want to see if you can break stories in competitive situations, and if you're competing against other inexperienced reporters, you're not proving much because who are beating? You learn more by getting knocked around by top reporters on a competitive beat because you're force-fed -- you have to struggle to keep up. I'm not saying there's no value in covering women's hoops, but your logic is backwards if you think you learn more on a beat that has less competition. Really, it was like covering preps, except the players were grownups (all of them were older than I was, in fact) and it was possible to have intelligent conversations with some of them.

Edit: Out of nostalgia now, I just Googled the WBL and happened across this interview with one of its stars, Molly Bolin. In it, she admits to having loved the press! How quaint!

http://aol.wnba.com/features/wbl_bolin.html

 

Sportsnut, if you want to cuver a beet, your gonna haf to lern to spel thingz rite.

 

I know of one major paper that covers the hell out of the local WNBA team. Preview stories, preview box. Gamers and notebooks. A weekly feature (After all, it's the summer...)

They also have an Arena Football team that draws roughly twice what the WNBA team does. The season preview story was 12 inches and gamers are 10-12 inches. No features ever.

For the record, I covered women's college and pro hoops extensively very early in my career. I loved it. Access was incredible, people were happy to see you covering them, coaches would always return your calls... The games weren't the most exciting to watch, but it was better than preps.

The problem is, other than a very small niche, almost nobody cares...

 

I would equivocate it with a minor league baseball beat. Niche fans, no travel, small amount of space on the budget. If you get over 30 inches a week, that's a surprise.

 

I would say it's better than Minor League baseball unless you live in one of the cities that actually really cover those teams. There are a few of them...

It's better than preps because you don't have to take your own boxes and there are no prep parents, but you do get the "soccer fan types" who no matter what you do, will complain that it's not nearly enough coverage.

 

WNBA ... Where NoBody Attends.

I'd like to think I came up with that, since I've never heard it anywhere else.