Simmons on sports writing

[BTExpress]

He's talking about after games, not practices or the other day-to-day stuff where relationships are built. I don't know how things work in the other leagues, but I can't remember the last time I saw someone get an exclusive after an NFL game. Anyone who has covered one knows that they can skip the gang bangs and write a solid gamer off of quote sheets or the televised press conferences. Is anything lost when deadline forces someone to take that approach? Probably not.

Sometimes --- maybe most times --- you'd be right.

But there was this game between the Lakers and Jazz in Utah. Magic is talking to Utah writer, and then when he finishes the L.A. writers corral him. They ask him, "Hey, what was with that disagreement you and Westhead were having?"

And Magic starts with his "I can't play here anymore. Tomorrow I'm going to go ask the man (Buss) to trade me." A few days later, Westhead is fired. Now, the decision to fire Westhead had already been made a couple of days BEFORE Magic said anything, but Magic's locker room tirade is what made news and what made everybody think (heck, many still do) that Magic fired the coach.


And that's why you go to the games and ask questions and don't depend on pool reporters to do it.

 

[bigpern23]

Does anybody have a doubt that if Simmons' idea came to fruition he'd be on Twitter after that hypothetical Celtics game griping about the pool reporters not asking this question or that?

Nah, he'd be sitting on his couch, covered in Cheetos dust, writing a crappy gamer and telling House or J-Bug, "I'm a real boy!"

 

[Mark2010]

I truly get where Simmons is coming from, because I've more or less done this with college baseball the past two seasons.
We're in an SEC state, one of the few places college baseball is a major sport. The two SEC schools are three hours away, though. Since the AP barely recognizes that college baseball exists until the conference tournaments and regionals, we end up writing most of our own stuff.
We could just copy and paste the SID's release as soon as it goes on the website, but the quality of those vary wildly from school to school. So, I prefer to look at the box score, a few highlights and maybe video of a postgame presser (or use a quote from the team release) and patch together a gamer of our own. A lot of schools, especially in the SEC (Mississippi State, South Carolina, LSU and Alabama are the best with this), usually have all this stuff put on their website within an hour of the game ending. If you're on deadline, there's Gametracker and the 8-inch basic story option.

You write enough of those gamers, and over time you get a feel for trends. You can get on the weekly conference calls and throw some weekend previews together. The SEC teams play a few neutral-site midweek games close to us, so we'll cover those and spin a couple features out of them.
Essentially, I've become our college baseball beat writer while attending just a couple games a year in person. There have been many days where I crank out 50-60 inches of copy, put in three or four hours of work, e-mail three or four stories to my editor and never leave the house.
If it can be done with a minor sport like that, there are certainly organizations that could employ the same tactic with an operation like the NBA, where there's a hundred times more material available. It's an approach that can save a lot of money for small or cash-strapped organizations. It's the 21st century way of watching a game on TV and stealing quotes off the radio.

Now, where the idea breaks down is like others have said -- somebody has to ask the questions in the first place. Somebody has to spend enough time around the team to work the beat, develop sources and break news away from the playing field. To dig up those germs of ideas and stories that blow up into bigger stories. To find out the scoop on injuries and pick up on nuances that become the basis for stories.
You can cover games by remote, but you can never truly work a beat. In my college baseball example, I might occasionally write a better game story than the major metro's beat writer, but I'm never going to provide the same depth of coverage on a day-to-day basis. Thinking you can is just foolish.

Did the same with FCS college football. The technology has definitely made it easier to do long distance. Do I wish I could be there in person? Sure. But logistics make that impossible much of the time, so you do the best you can with what you have.

 

[Den1983]

Simmons has a point, but what really irritates me is the line of questioning is so damn idiotic. I mean, these are questions that are amateurish and of little thought. Interviewing has become a lost art, and that's why the public thinks so little of reporters these days. They need to do away with in-game interviews. Those things are, indeed, pointless and kudos to Pop for making a mockery of it. It amazes me how poor the questioning is.

 

[Reuben Frank]

I can't remember the last time I saw someone get an exclusive after an NFL game.

Come to Philly. Eagles post-game we [the beat guys] get a fair chunk of our stuff in 1-on-1's. You're not going to get everybody by yourself, but you figure out ways to do it. Follow a guy out into the hallway and grab him while he's waiting to do a TV hit. Get a guy walking to the bus. Skip the guys at the podium if you know they're going to be transcribed and get guys at their locker while a lot of other scribes are in the interview room. Wait till the crowd thins out and get the last few guys coming out of the trainer's room just before they close the room. Or maybe get fresh stuff from guys back at their locker after they're done on the podium. If you're really committed to trying to get quotes nobody else will have, you can do it. And it makes your stories a lot stronger.

 

[Cubbiebum]

It's just a thought not fully thought out. Three guys can't do it and send out quotes because three guys aren't going to ask all the questions that cover sidebars and the such. Sure, they'd cover the gamer story just fine but all the other stuff would be lost. It's a two heads are better than one kind of thing or in this case 50 heads are better than three.

Plus, some sidebars are a very specific angle and you are the only one who can ask the question that makes it a story. I've done some of those.

Again, this is a thought from a guy who never had a beat and likely only reads gamer stories the night after a game. He doesn't pick up the newspaper and get all the sidebars and other stories that go into more detail on a interesting, but not necessarily important, part of that game.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

I can't remember the last time I saw someone get an exclusive after an NFL game.

Come to Philly. Eagles post-game we [the beat guys] get a fair chunk of our stuff in 1-on-1's. You're not going to get everybody by yourself, but you figure out ways to do it. Follow a guy out into the hallway and grab him while he's waiting to do a TV hit. Get a guy walking to the bus. Skip the guys at the podium if you know they're going to be transcribed and get guys at their locker while a lot of other scribes are in the interview room. Wait till the crowd thins out and get the last few guys coming out of the trainer's room just before they close the room. Or maybe get fresh stuff from guys back at their locker after they're done on the podium. If you're really committed to trying to get quotes nobody else will have, you can do it. And it makes your stories a lot stronger.

Bravo.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Does anybody have a doubt that if Simmons' idea came to fruition he'd be on Twitter after that hypothetical Celtics game griping about the pool reporters not asking this question or that?

Nah, he'd be sitting on his couch, covered in Cheetos dust, writing a crappy gamer and telling House or J-Bug, "I'm a real boy!"

Priceless.

 

[podunk press]

Bill Simmons is spouting the opinion of bloggers everywhere, many of whom have credentials, yet don't attend games because they don't need to go to that effort to generate Web hits.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Simmons has a point, but what really irritates me is the line of questioning is so damn idiotic. I mean, these are questions that are amateurish and of little thought. Interviewing has become a lost art, and that's why the public thinks so little of reporters these days. They need to do away with in-game interviews. Those things are, indeed, pointless and kudos to Pop for making a mockery of it. It amazes me how poor the questioning is.

The in-game interview as pioneered by ESPN, which writes Simmons checks.

 

[Cousin Jeffrey]

I read this yesterday, so I forget, isn't there a dissonance here between raving about Battier's brilliant quote to an enterprising reporter and championing less access? Someone has to ask questions. The only thing we need pool reporters for is tweeting press conferences. Nothing worse than 10 reporters on a beat you follow all tweeting out same practice quotes.

 

[Cousin Jeffrey]

Ok that was his point, and it has some merit in theory. In reality, not so much.