Why is most sportswriting so bad?

You still don't get it JC. PM me, I'll try to explain it without bothering others.

 

Good name for an online college:

School U.

 

True.

 

That's a great question. I've always analyzed what I've done, look at the work of others, and asked questions from those whose opinion I respected. I've learned there is more than one way to write a story. There is no right or wrong. However, the facts, the basics of who, what, when, where and how must be in the for the story have any relevance. Get that right first and everything else will follow.

 

The best way to improve your writing is to improve your reporting.

If you can get details or viewpoints or information that's not included in the AP stories and press releases, you are doing your job.

If you are just regurgitating what you are provided, perhaps with a flowery bent, you are obsolete.

 

You can't leave out search engine optimization as a major factor that is changing writing. You have to write not only so you attract the attention of a reader, but you also have to make sure certain "power" words or phrases are up high so you can attract the engine of a search engine spider.

On the down side, that has the potential to mechanize writing and kill some good prose in the name of attracting online readership.

On the plus side, that gives license to telling writers to get to the fuckin' point, and not waste four paragraphs with lame anecdotes or lousy historical lessons.

The good writers always will find a way to make it work.

 

Ace and Bob, excellent points all the way around.

 

Except you are comparing apples and oranges. Are the 2-4 hours a day that a novelist spends on writing a book "easy" compared to 99.9 percent of the world's work standards? If Wilco would spend five hours a day writing commercial jingles and doing weddings, would you expect a drop in quality on their next album? Or should they be able to handle it because, hey, it's an easier life than landscaping? The question wasn't about our jobs, it was about our craft...Hey, maybe that's the easiest way to put it -- more and more, sports writers are in a position where they are expected to be laborers, and not craftsmen.

 

SEO is more about making sure the spiders read the headline than some text inside.

 

Info bar across the top, headline AND the lede. As well as watching for any repetition. SEO, the opposite of what human editors, puts a premium on having the same power words repeated, though not too much, or else the spiders look at it as spam.

 

To reinforce a point that Bob Cook made about search engine optimization ...

Not saying that plagiarism is the reason why, but this op-ed piece in Monday's NY Times brings up a good point:

When many young people think of writing, they don’t think of fashioning original sentences into a sustained thought. They think of making something like a collage of found passages and ideas from the Internet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/opinion/13tue4.html

But here's the thing - the craft is not being skillfully taught or honed anymore, or practiced as much as it used to be. And as an offshoot, some aren't exercising their ability to come up with an original thought, instead going for a regurgitated mishmash of other ideas.

 

I guess the bottom line is that sports writing has become so bad that newspapers are seriously looking at robots taking over the writing of sports stories.

So we need to do better than stringing together names and facts with verbs and cliches.