What Makes This Piece Good, Vol. 4: Selena Roberts' gamer on Knicks/Heat

Another question: Did the editors insert or extract anything?

I ask because the candy cane line is a unique descriptor. Possible that someone on the NYT sports desk watched the game and created/inserted that description?

 

These images and other figurative language could have been conjured well in advance.
I think it's a mistake to assume she created them right on deadline.
And "lick" the rim- this is a tired conceit by now.

 

There are a lot of people who write better on deadline than when they have unlimited/more time. I was always like that.

 

What I hear in these questions is a lot of excuses.

If only I had that kind of access.

If only I had that much time to file my gamer.

If only I had the same resources.

If these were the single examples of good writing that you could find from Buster Olney, Mike Bianchi, Sally Jenkins, or Salena Roberts, you might have a point.

These are exceptional writers. Examples of their exceptionalism have been presented for discussion. In searching for why the circumstances they were writing under may be different from yours, it sounds like you are saying that there's nothing to be learned from the writing.

 

Great points.

In all likelihood, Selena didn't have better access than anyone at this game. She might have had longer to write than if it had been a night game, but it's not like all gamers from afternoon games are on this level. She probably wrote the story with the same info and quotes that were available to everyone else, and it wasn't like she had unlimited space to write either.

So why was this gamer better than everyone else's? Great lede, great tight writing, great use of quotes.

It's like making the perfect hamburger. Everyone can do it, but only the best can do it this well.

 

For someone who asks a WHOLE LOT of questions in the same vein, you seem a little put off. Why is that?

 

He worships The New York Times. Many do not.

 

I don't care if he worships the Santa Maria Times. They're valid questions. But not meant to tear down Selena.

Did she just whip out a 998-word gamer in one shot (so to speak)? With zero editing? With zero rewrite? This was a big-time gamer that was seen by plenty of eyes on the desk.

Plenty goes into the making of the sausage.

 

I think Roberts' writing often lacks clarity. She needs a hard edit more than most.

 

This may be a fair point, but I'm guessing there are quite a few "top" journalists, who work with copy editors whose eyes would roll back in their heads if they were told that.

There's no shortage of writers who can thank great copy editors for making them look great.

 

It's a problem when the germ of your piece makes no sense, as has been the case with the SI columns.

 

I don't object to the questions themselves. (I do think the Times is the best paper in the United States, and is one of only a small few aspiring to be great, but I don't think that's a factor here.)

What bothers me here is the underlying tone that others could turn out articles just as good if they only had the time, or the space, or the access, or the resources. That not only excuses their own work, it tears down the excellent work DD has highlighted.

Thomas Lake is a Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated. He surely has the access, time, space, resources and editors to help him craft great stories.

But, he wrote "2 on 5" as a freelancer. Every other writer in America had 16 years to write about that game, and could have had the same access as Lake. But, only one writer put it together, and sold it to SI.

There are great stories to be written that do not require access, and that don't have to be written on deadline. Find them, and write them, if you think you have the talent.