Club youth sports teams: Why should anybody other than parents GAF?

Where do you think he ended up after he lost?

 

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a moral component, but, to me, there's always been something uncomfortable about covering kids under high school age. That even goes for something like the Little League World Series. Is there interest? Within a subset of people in the community, there is certainly interest. The Little League ballpark in my hometown, when I was a kid, before travel ball siphoned all the talent out of these leagues, was the summer social gathering place for parents and kids. At the same time, treating the exploits of 10-year-olds as newsworthy turns this, and turns the players and the parents, into something we don't necessarily want it to be. It's worth considering whether coverage is corrupting, in its way. Not to mention that we're covering minors here, who we're always wary of putting in a spotlight, though less so, I guess, in the Facebook, every-kid-is-a-star era (mine included).

Now, is it the newspaper's job to blow off something that garners interest because it has, in its sole discretion, decided to play community conscience, in this particular way? That's the $1 million question.

 

All that about feeling weird applies to prep sports too, but that's where the paychecks came from, so I got over it.

 

The Gulag!

Or Pennsylvania.

 

I'd love an intelligent reason for why he invoked Pennsylvania there, but I think I'm barking up the wrong tree.

And that's a fucking edit.

 

Examine why you're feeling weird. Do you think you're exploiting those kids? If you're covering them because the coverage is merited, then you're simply doing your job as a journalist.

Do you feel like covering Little League is for dirty old men? That's silly.

If you're covering them and it isn't merited ... just don't do it.

 

Why is it your job as a journalist?

Because it's important? Or because people will buy the paper if you do?

(Hint: it's the latter)

 

As you said, it's OK to see this as making a living, covering things that are necessary to move product. The need to assign a nobility or importance to spotlighting mundane (non-) events in a medium that has lost its relevance is where we run into problems. Why can't it just be a job?

I know, because that's how they justify the pay and the lifestyle.

 

This is where my paper sits. Baseball at every level is extremely popular in this area and youth baseball draws interest from those outside the immediate circle of family and friends.

As a general rule, we cut off any meaningful coverage of youth baseball at age 9, when they got out of coach-pitch, and then only for state tournament-level play and beyond. Personally, I really start taking a keener interest at about age 11, when the cream starts to rise to the top. As a prep writer, I start keeping track of the better players with an eye to 4-5 years down the road when they're in high school. As for travel ball, I keep them at arm's length. If the teams submit a photo after winning a tournament, we'll run it, but otherwise, no.

One final point about local interest in what we cover in the summer. I spent three hot, sweaty days a couple of weeks ago covering a big amateur golf tournament that drew college players from all over the country, and was won by a local guy. Was there a wide local interest in this tournament? Not really, but the event and the field gave it some weight, and produced four days of CP coverage, plus a column, in what otherwise would have been a dead weekend of boring wire copy.

 

Covering youth hockey at the Novosibirsk Gazette. Worse than any gulag he could ever go to.

 

My approach to club sports and traveling youth teams is this: If somebody brings by a photo and asks if you would run it, I'll run it when space is available.

If somebody asks about covering a club event, I'm only going to do it if (a) it's a local tournament with a lot of teams attending and (b) I am able to work it into my schedule.

Fortunately, I never ran into any problems with either when I've dealt with this stuff, but that might be because they were smaller communities, in which most parents and coaches of such teams were happy to get a photo once in a while. Or maybe I just dealt with communities in which parents didn't lose sleep over their traveling team not getting coverage.

 

At what point does flipping burgers or stocking shelves become a better career choice?