Covering prep sports - with a child on the team

Eh, I had a sports editor who covered a certain team for many years. That didn't change when his son became old enough to play on the varsity. Nor did it change when his son became the team's starting quarterback. It was a pretty small town and everyone associated with the school and team knew who each person was, even though it was never expressly stated in a story.

On the other hand, another place I worked, one reporter (not the SE this time) felt he was obligated to recuse himself from covering his son's teams during the years his son was a varsity team member. He remained on staff and just covered other teams/sports in the region. Because of the schedule and demands of the job, he was almost always working on game nights (as was the entire staff) and rarely got a chance to attend his son's games. But he understood he had a job to do.

So I guess it can run either way.

 

An SE I once worked for decided to cover all four of his sons, and each were three-sport athletes. The oldest, in fact, played Division II baseball.

I thought going in it was a conflict of interest, especially since we had a staff of five (since cut to three) and covered about 25 high schools. But, the SE was fair. He didn't favor his sons. He treated them like any other athlete. And, when his kids deserved to be on the all-area teams, they were. I couldn't argue with that.

You can be fair when you want to be. But, going in, if I were king, I would have forced him to cover other schools. I'm just glad I was no longer covering prep sports when my kids were competing, though neither were stars by any stretch.

 

I couldn't disagree with you more on just about everything here, from mentioning every kid in the story to being objective when you're covering your kid's team.

 

I have no children, so this isn't an issue. But one of the more successful Class 1A high schools (small, less than 200 students) in our coverage area (state finals in football, state tourmament in volleyball and softball, numerous state track medalists in the last four years) is the one both my parents graduated from back in the 1950s. Not only were I and my siblings born there (we moved before starting school), my dad moved back to the family farm several years ago. I have several cousins living there whose children attended this high school.

While the family name is not unique by any means, it is one that is pretty much automatically associated with this town and most of our readers who would care are aware of my connection to it. I never covered a game in which a blood relative was playing (the closest was having a cousin's daughter as a cheerleader at a few football games), but so many people in that town have some type of association with my family that some find it hard to believe I haven't lived there since 1966.

Since I usually cover a much larger city school, I rarely cover small-town high unless it's in the playoffs and I'm available to help our area guy. Fortunately, I guess, this school wins as much or more when I'm not covering it as it does when I am. I just happen to remember when star jock Bubba Jr.'s daddy was teammates with one of my cousins 30 or 40 years ago.

 

So you want to work with young writers, and you're writing about a team that you admittedly have a conflict of interest covering. So, you're teaching the writers that it's OK to ignore a conflict of interest?

No-brainer to me. You pick whether you want to write about the games or see your kids play. Want to watch your kids? Stop writing about games they play in. Want to cover games? Cover the other school in your area, the one your kids don't play for.

 

I understand it's a tough situation for some. In one case I witnessed, there was no way we could give a guy regular Friday nights off during football season to allow him to go watch his kid play if he wasn't covering the game. Our staff just wasn't large enough we could afford to play one man short. I'm sure there are tons of jobs with the same situation.

Likewise, what gives if you are a one-man shop where you write, edit, shoot, etc.?

Thus, if watching your kid play prep sports is that is important to you, you probably need to find a different job.

 

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

 

Don't cover the games, but go to them and approach some of the other parents to solicit ads from them. Go to the visiting team's fans and tell them your paper may consider expanding its coverage area ... if only it had a few advertisers out that way. And make sure you bring back good pictures from the game, too.

 

Huh? We can't even get our advertising department to do that. If I wanted to sell advertising, I would go and, you know, sell advertising.

 

One of my colleagues has two young sons, both of whom will be athletes when they get to high school. I mentioned this thread to him and asked what he would do. No hesitation: "I'd refuse," he said and called it a "huge conflict of interest."

 

Will be interesting to see what happens if he's in the same job at that time and whether he is still going to be resolute about not going to those games, which is likely to mean he goes to other games at the same time and doesn't see his kids play.

 

Thanks for all the feedback....

A post script... Season opener... We got the Bob/Brian Griese moment out of the way early....

http://murrayledger.com/sports/high_schools/ramey-s-two-run-double-lifts-mhs/article_88b34630-89fd-11e2-a82c-0019bb2963f4.html