What's the biggest misconception people you know have about sports journalism?

While I'm at a total loss to explain the overwhelming animosity between the newsies and sportsies on this site, I've done both and honestly can't say one is easier than the other.

They're just different, and if you're doing it well, they're both complicated and difficult.

In short, get over it.

 

Re: What's the biggest misconception people you know have about sports journalis

I'm not trying to bash sports at all. Like I said, I've done it. But I'm not going to sit back while some, not all or even the majority, make my job out to seem like some piece-of-cake 9-to-5er, when nothing could be further from the truth.
There's certainly some truth to what Zeke said about people knowing more about football than tax millage and often going over the sports stories more. But that's just some people. It's different for others.
And I would say there's less margin for error for news, not more. If I screw up how much people are paying in taxes, that's worse than screwing up the basketball team's field goal percentage. And I will hear about it more. Worse yet, I'm more likely to get sued in news.
And I stand by my complexity arguement. No game is ever as complicated as the most complicated news stories. Some sports stories can be more difficult, but not the majority. Crimes, taxes, developments, budgets, the ins and outs of government, I'd say that's all a bit more complicated.

 

Not game stories, but NCAA violations, high school transfer cases, etc., etc. - those can be complex.

 

I remember my first summer at my first daily newspaper. Sports was slow (and so mismanaged at the time that I was always worried I'd never get my 40 hours without cheating) and news was short a person, so I helped out with the occasional story. Probably did about six or seven, a mix of news and features.

One day I filled in to cover the main city's school board meeting, one in which they were going to present the budget for the coming year. Got there at 7 p.m., they had about 10 minutes of open forum, then they went into executive session. For five fucking hours. Thankfully the metro paper sent a hot chick to cover it for them, so we got to know each other pretty well in those hours of interminable waiting (no, not THAT well). Finally got let back into the chambers at midnight, get a budget, talk to a couple of people to figure out just what the fuck I'm looking at, then back to the office (at least we were an evening paper). Spent the next few hours taking my time poring over the information, then wrote the story and was done by 2.

It was hard. Not that my job wasn't hard at times, but this was a different hard, requiring me to use different parts of the noggin. It was exhausting and I worried my story wouldn't scan or, worse, have some glaring error. But I read it later that day, and I'd say it was worlds better than any story the beat writer had done off a school board meeting (usually a 40-inch empty-the-notebook-and-include-the-minutes abortion). I packaged the whole thing together in 18 clean-flowing inches that hit all the high spots. So what did I learn? I ... forget. But I do have a better sense of empathy for the newsies after that summer, but I still thought I could outwrite them with a lobotomy, a TRS-80 and a six-pack of Maker's Mark fifths in me.

I remember when I still had scattered lit embers of confidence in my writing ...

 

To each, his or her own, I guess.

I got out of news side because it was just too grim on the crime/disaster beat — too many dead people, too many grieving family members, too many folks who had their lives ruined by a gunshot or a switchblade or an argument gone terribly wrong, too many dysfunctional families ripped asunder in family court.

Coach Nutsack at his worst can be a mean-spirited, evil duplicitous bastard. But I can handle him.

It was the mothers who couldn't understand why a drunk driver had killed her husband and left her three kids to raise or the dad who had no earthly idea why his 17-year-old son had put a 12 gauge in his mouth and pulled the trigger that I couldn't deal with. At least not for more than a couple of years.

I don't ever see wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m. and see Coach Nutsack and I never cried after a game because I knew some innocent family's world had just been shattered and would never be right again.

But when I was working news side, I saw a lot of dead bodies and destroyed lives in the wee hours of the morning and I just wanted to make it stop.

In truth, I couldn't stop it, so I settled for the next best thing — getting as far away from it as I could.

 

Not to mention salary caps and financial dealings to get under said caps, stadium financing, steroids, players in legal trouble, antitrust suits, CBAs, strikes, trades, contracts, agents, recruiting, suspensions ...

 

Oh, yeah, forgot injuries and medical issues ...

 

Tuff stuff right there lono. The newsside is not just government meetings and the such.

 

hey dipshit, i was a city editor before i returned to sports.

 

Then you must have forgotten everything, or you were a pretty shitty editor. Those are the only two excuses for your ignorance.

 

or you're a bitch who's simply overstating his case. yeah, one of the two, i'm sure.

 

Petty's the one in blue.