Covering prep sports - with a child on the team

In almost every situation, you would defer to the conflict of interest and not cover a team your child plays on.

But if you're a one-man sports staff at the Podunk Times, where Podunk High is the only school you cover, your kid is the starting tailback, and there's no budget for a stringer, what are you going to do?

I think this is the dilemma Shoeless Joe is referring to.

 

This could be my dilemma in a few years.
I cover eight schools and I am the only sports reporter for my weekly.
There are no stringers. There are no freelancers. There is no budget.
I'm lucky two area people are great photographers and often send me free photos from games I can't get to.
The paper's other full-time writer and the part-time writer cover everything but sports, and they each live in other cities.
So it boils down to this: If a sports event is to be covered, I'm the one who covers it.
That may change by the time my son gets to high school, but I doubt it.
It's far from an enviable position, but that's life.
Ethics professors may condemn me in class and others can get on their soapboxes and preach, but they have that luxury. I will have the choice between covering it and getting paid, or not covering it and not getting paid.

 

A major reason I left the business was because I didn't want to still be covering high school sports when I was old enough to have a kid on the team.

 

I cannot believe you have the balls to argue this. You're wrong. Nobody has come to your defense.

We're not all 20 with fresh degrees as you so ridiculously
went as far as to guarantee. In fact, the majority of us are the opposite. Read your own words, you guaranteed the overwhelming majority was the 20-ish crowd with fresh degrees and that's clearly not the case.

At this point, your dog probably knows more about this than you. Maybe he should walk you out the door instead.

 

This is an interesting topic, as I have three kids, including a high school daughter who thankfully is a cheerleader. Right now, I don't have to worry about this topic.

But ... my youngest daughter is inching closer to high school. She's a very good soccer player already and a decent basketball player. My son will inevitably play something in high school.

I couldn't do it. Just could not cover their games. I mean for fucks sake, if my daughter scored a hat trick? Or my son hit the game-winning home run? Or struck out with the bases loaded and the team down one run? Of course, I work for a paper where others could cover their games, but not all are that lucky. There are plenty of one-man sports staffs out there that would have to cover those events.

My first job in life is as a husband/father. If my kids are playing, I need to try to be there as a father, not a journalist. If my daughter scores the winning goal, I want to be there to relish it. To scream. To hug her after. Not to sit there, jotting down a note as to how the goal was scored and then stick my notepad under her nose after the game. If my son commits an error that loses the game, I want to be there as a father, to give him a hug after and tell him to keep his head up.

 

Creole,

I understand that, mate. Is your staff large enough they can afford to give you game nights off to just go watch as a fan? Or do you plan to find a different profession during those years?

Even though I don't have kids of my own, I understand the dilemma. On the other hand, the rest of our staff would mutiny if you gave Dave every Friday night off during football season so he could go watch his kid. It would just mean one less person to get the job done on a staff that was already pretty well stretched to the max.

Thus Dave had to either 1) cover his son's games, 2) skip his son's games and cover other games or work the copy desk or 3) find a different job that could allow him that scheduling flexibility. In his case, he agreed to go cover other events and work the copy desk.

 

Mark2010, there's a huge difference between the ethical issues in a reporter covering a game in which a child plays, and whatever conflicts you think come from coaching your own children.

The latter is widely accepted as normal -- I'd think on most youth teams, at least in my experience, for someone to take the time to volunteer as a coach, it's often going to be for their kid's team. Yes, that presents some conflict in terms of perceived favoritism, but not at any professional level. It's not a valid parallel.

For a reporter to cover an event in which his or her child is participating -- even if you go to the effort of some kind of full-disclosure nonsense in the story -- is a violation of journalism ethics, regardless of what size paper you're at. There isn't a circulation level at which you start caring about ethics -- you either do or you don't, and that either makes you a professional journalist, or a dad who has no problem writing about his kid's games.

 

Every now and then I like coming back over here to see interesting threads to remind me of days gone by.
I'm curious as to whether Drip or any of the others who say this don't have kids. I found myself there before and was actually harder on him than I was the other kids, same as I was coaching youth sports.

My thoughts on this also extend to the one-person shops out there where, yeah, there could be a dad or mom old enough at Smalltown Gazette to find himself or herself in that situation, maybe even as the publisher or managing editor who is the only competent sports coverage person.

 

If you check out the link our OP provided us, you'll see that you and him are far apart in your priorities and ethics. Glorified his kid in the first sentence of his first story.

Disgusting.

 

Why is that not a valid parallel? Can you not see a POTENTIAL conflict of interest when it comes to coaching your own kids? You're the one deciding who plays, when and where? As a coach, you are in a much greater position to influence many lives than a reporter is. I know if I'm a player and the guy I'm competing with for playing time happens to be the coach's son (or daughter), I'm looking to transfer ASAP.

The more I think about this, the more I see a ton of parallels, including what you mentioned. I seriously wonder why I am interested in going to a slew of sporting events that I don't care about, don't have a rooting interest in, don't know the players personally and writing the nuances of them. Heaven knows, I can earn twice as much doing a whole lot more interesting things.

What I have seen, particularly in smaller communities, is many readers prefer a "homer" to an objective professional journalist when it comes to high school sports. I don't know that I've ever gotten a comment about being too objective, but I've gotten a ton about being "too hard on the kids". Which is a major reason I won't cover preps any longer.

 

Negative feedback makes you abandon preps, but the idea of covering your own kid wouldn't. Interesting.

 

It just got to the point where "I don't need this aggrevation anymore. Just not worth it." As mentioned earlier, I don't have kids.

My family moved to another state three days after I graduated high school and I've never seen my alma mater play. So every team I covered was "neutral". It was fun for a while, but after hundreds (thousands?) of games, it sort of lost its luster.