Your favorite beat and why?

Interesting to see that MLB baseball hasn't come up.

I am from Australia so I don't really know a whole lot about American sports writing, but the MLB beat is considered the most gruelling, right?

Can someone give me an idea of what it is like to be a MLB beat reporter?

 

College hoops.
Wow. And it's winning in a landslide, too.

 

What do you guys think is a better job?
1. A reporter job at a major metro as a preps writer. You only semi-regularly help out with the major beats, writing sidebars from big games and other games that regular reporters can't get to. You also do a fair amount of "garbage work." You're issued a company laptop and occasionally travel. Your potential to move up is high.
2. A reporter job at a small/midsized paper where you're covering a major beat, traveling regularly but also needed to work on the desk, take scores in the office after a big game, help layout pages, etc. Your pay is $5K-$10K less. You use your own laptop, but the amount of "garbage" work you do is less. Your work is 250,000 subscriptions less circulated. (Of course, the major metro steals a lot of your work too, makes a few phone calls just because they can, and never attributes it to you) And, you've hit the ceiling for reporter jobs at your paper.

 

MLB and NBA are probably the toughest.
I did NBA at a very young age, when I was single, loved the travel, covered a championship team that was very good to deal with. First year on a big-time beat was the best year I've had in this biz.

Never did full baseball season, was usually No. 3 guy in a 2-team market, backing up two of the best beat writers anywhere, at any time. And still baseball was a bitch.

 

That helps narrow it down. How you've avoided the local stock car races there is a wonder. I know your current SE doesn't mind those, but still ...

 

Another vote for ACC hoops. I grew up on it, it's probably my favorite sport/league/whatever, so I'd like to cover it someday soon.

 

Fresh out of college, that would have been my dream. Strangely enough, the opportunity presented itself some 4-5 years ago. Well removed from college, I wasn't interested.

I hink the main reason no one has mentioned it, is, truth be told, there aren't a lot of people who have had the job or currently have the job. Heck there's several thousand writers out there, just aren't that many MLB teams, thus not a lot of us that have them, although a lot of people on here would like to make everyone else think so....which I find odd.
And a lot of thsoe that do have the MLB beats may not be on tonight, as they look at Mondays and Thursdays when the teams they cover are off as family days, or like the team, sometimes travel days. MLB will pop up here eventually.
Not a lot of NBA, NFL, or NHL mentions either....just the odds. At some point, most of us will have covered some college, but a good percentage will never grab a major pro beat.

Anyway, any beat can be grueling if you don't have fun. I have fun at my job. I love preps, I love colleges, so no need for me to give that up.

 

I cover a pretty small DI, and as someone else said, the access is f-ing amazing. A potential story came up tonight...called the basketball coach at 9 p.m. He called me back at 10. No big whoop. There wasn't crap to the story, but had it been one of his players, I could have gotten ahold of them just as easy. It's not where I probably want to be in 10 years, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it right now.

 

i've seen guys i've covered enshrined in cooperstown and i've covered people who couldn't have played D-III ball if they were 4.1 students.

still, for me, there's nothing quite like friday night lights. major college fb is cool as hell, but, everybody gets involved come friday night.

 

College basketball
Golf (local and pro, a ton of fun to cover, good personalities, shit is done early -- of course you have to get up early)

 

AVN awards beat.