No, you CAN'T root in the damn press box

Excuse a bit of a rambling tangent here, but it makes sense to me, at least...

I went to Oregon in the late 80s. At the time it was regarded as one of the best J Schools on the west coast. It did not have a single faculty member -- not one -- who had ever worked in the business. Which is to say... a great number of J schools have had a tenuous connection to reality, at best. Their thoughts on journalism meant little to me then and nothing to me now.

Readers or viewers are not as stupid as we pretend when we have these discussions. The old school, make-my-professor-happy notion that she should hide that she's happy that Colorado won... that's utterly pointless. Your audience does not want someone who will pretend to be indifferent to their alma mater winning a game in a pretty huge upset. What they want is someone who will be honest with them about what they are covering. They can tell the difference.

A lot of you got sold a bill of goods when you got into the business -- essentially that what you were doing was a calling, like the priesthood. There were sacred rules you had to follow. You will work long hours for fast-food pay, you'll never get a holiday off, and you will act like what you are doing is deadly serious. That's all kind of ridiculous when what you are doing is writing about fucking football.

It's OK to enjoy yourself. It's OK to be happy when your team wins a big game. She kind of overreacted, but if my school had the recent record her school has, I'd overreact too.

Pearlman wasn't all that critical, but he can go back to shilling for the TV show and leave her alone. When I clicked his tweet the first response I saw was from a former newspaper writer here, wondering what ever happened to the old standards. To be clear, this person was a terrific writer and a top-notch journalist and I'm sure she's just as wonderful now in the world of academia... but I could go back through her tweets and pull up reams of fangirl stuff she's posted over the years, too. It's OK.

TV people get excited for the local team, particularly if they have personal ties. Newspaper people do the exact same thing but pretend they don't because their professors told them it was a sin. It's OK. You've graduated, and you don't need their approval anymore.

 

I get that she's young and excited. But she's not some fan blogger. She works for a CBS station. What do CSU fans think? Air Force fans? It looks silly. She's not part of the team and the team will never regard her as part of the team. And what happens if CU loses or there's issues? Her responsibility is to the job and the viewers, not the Buffs. (To be clear - some of the fans who write or pod are excellent and I see the need they fill).

 

Hell, the local news crews in Arkansas wear shirts with their station logo on one side of the chest and a Razorback on the other.

 

And again - virtually none of this has anything to do with what she tweeted. What about the Air Force fans? Who cares? She didn't go to Air Force, and they didn't just upset TCU.

What happens when they lose? I suspect we'll find out soon enough. Prediction: she'll be disappointed.

If there are issues she'll do what every single other outlet will do, print or TV: she'll quote from the Baxter Holmes ESPN piece about the issues, because that's who breaks this stuff now.

And yes, her responsibility is to the job and the viewers. It's not to Jeff Pearlman or a J School professor.

 

In my J-school classes, my students who are covering sports are told not to cheer in the damn press box; that we don’t refer to the team as “we,” as in “We lost a game this weekend that we should have won,” that we don’t work for the SID office and we’re gonna piss them off sometimes and that’s OK; and (for all my students) you can’t call me or the university president by our first names.

 

In college, we asked a broadcast journalism professor to write an op-ed for the paper (almost sure it was regarding the O.J. Simpson coverage). After reading it, one of our EICs said something to the effect of he wrote as well as a freshman off the street who we MIGHT entrust to write a brief off a press release. I was already pretty sure my J dep't sucked and that sealed it. As far as I know, they're still mostly teaching theory, which, well, great. Knock yourselves out.

 

In the JOU department t in which I teach, about half of the faculty have worked in some form of journalism, either print or broadcast. Several others have had careers in PR before teaching. We have a separate track for students studying PR, but their first couple of classes are beginning reporting and editing. Then we have a couple of folks on the faculty who haven’t worked in industry, and their contributions to the department are questionable.

 

I used to cheer for the clock. Does that count?

 

Once I ceased working in one-man shops, the edict from the sports editor was clear. One high school per sport was allowed to make a postseason run for the sake of something interesting to cover. Everyone else was to be eliminated as soon as possible. If you came back to the office after covering a team whose season just ended, you were feted as though you had just conquered Gaul. And woe to the writer whose team lived to fight another round.

 

I still do

 

Is that on a column or a straight story. Because a column totally makes sense