What Makes A Good Sportswriter?

the story/drama/soap opera played out in 2004 between the Cubs and Steve Stone/Chip Caray are a microcosm of the current culture of sports journalism, particularly the relationship between the team and those who regularly cover that team.  (Link here, and all over the web)

If these events did not directly affect the way the majority of journalists cover their teams, it is at least endemic of the expectancy of MLB.  Even given the particulars of the situation (briefly, broadcasters worked for station owned by team), I would say it's very rare that any reporter or broadcaster or ball boy or popcorn vendor to be overtly critical of their team.

I'd like the A's beat to be covered by you & Susan Slusser.  Babe Power!

I'd also like to know who OaklandA23 is, but not if it means he or she can't still give us early press releases.

And I'd like to thank Blez for the access he's earned to get interviews, even if I don't like all the interviewees and some of their answers make me go "Huh? O...kay..." sometimes.  (By the way, I do happen to think he's earned that access honestly, not by kissing asses.) (Not that I'm trying to kiss his ass by saying that.  Unless he's in a position to get me a job with Michael Zagaris, in which case: mwah.)

What I am looking for in A's news is "news", and especially news from a different angle, and news that I won't find in an AP article. Both Mychael and Susan quite often give me "news", and that is why I read both.  As far as "from a different angle", one of the best A's related stories was the series that Susan wrote a few years ago with a first person account following Brynes in winter ball in the D.R.  She should have gotten an award of some kind for that series....... her discriptions of the crowds and the goings ons were vivid.

but your WRITING does! You're a hack! Ha ha, I can do that and it's not a CGV! Hacky sucky baseballgirl!!! <thread officially hijacked>

What was the question?

"criticize Blez for nothing more egregious than bringing real live A’s employees, coaches, managers and players onto AN?"  Seriously, I can't recall a single complaint about too much inside information.

What has been cause for concern, though, are the occasional instances when Blez has squelched discussion on behalf of the insiders over the voice of the community which is ostensibly so valued.  The deleted Urban diary, apparently at Slusser's request, is the obvious example.  If anyone gets CGVs for criticizing Urban lately, well, that would possibly be another.  To add, I learned that, soon after I dropped Oaklandtown, Blez emailed Slusser to ask whether she was OK with the character I'd written her as (it doesn't end pretty).  Slusser has a great sense of self and humor, so it wasn't a problem for her...but what if she'd hated it?  The whole question of whether we're not allowed to criticize AN-member media the same way we would other media folk, like Ratto or Morgan, is not very clear in theory and murkier still in practice.

There are plenty of folks here, including all of you front-pagers, who are quite smart enough to understand this distinction.  What happens when future access to insiders is perceived as threatened by comments from some parts of the community?  To my knowledge, AN's leadership has never addressed this conflict publicly, and into the vacuum of uncertainty ofter rushes the poisonous gas of despair.

Contrary to popular AN lore, the front page writers are by no means pressured, obligated, or encouraged to keep to a party line, or tread lightly on any subject concerning the A’s.

Hmm, does anyone really think that? Nice post, though, per usual.

What am I looking for from a sportswriter? Good writing and competence, I guess. We're lucky to have Slusser. The access/revealing what they know questions are not a big problem for me. In a certain sense, I would rather not know what's going on in the clubhouse.

then I did in the Urban discussion, because I can be a little more general and sweeping with my comments.

What I look for in a good sportswriter:

In baseball, I expect a fairly thorough knowledge of the minor leagues in general, of a team's minor league system, of what scouts and cross checkers see in certain players, of pitch sequencing, of defensive positioning.  I want to be enlightened as to how hitters prepare and how they try to correct their slumps.  

I really like to know where scouts are being sent on the major and minor league level.

I like to hear as much as possible about how pitchers see the tendencies of certain batters and how batters see the tendencies of certain pitchers.  I like to know who is using film for preparation and who eschews it.  

I like hearing about the human interest stuff as so far as it pertains to on the field state of readiness, for example, who drinks coffee to get amped, who drinks booze to calm down, tobacco, gum,  when to work out and how during the season, this stuff is interesting to me.

I don't like human interest blurbs.  I do like long pieces which can go into the deep background of a player, but not light frothy stuff which can fit in a notes column.  

I especially don't like throwaway quotes from a player or a team concerning: 1) Player X's personality, 2) Player X's opinion of the team right now, 3) the manager's assessment of the team right now, 4) the quality of the opposing team, and probably many more I can't think of right now.

In a football writer, the task is much more difficult, and very few writers are any good at it.    In football, we are constantly trying to understand what part of a particular team's success or failure is due to coaching, and what part is due to the unique abilities of that team's players.  Without hours and hours of film study, it is really hard to know what looks a quarterback is seeing, what adjustments they did or could have made at the line of scrimmage, whether the blockers fulfilled their assignments, whether a QB missed an opportunity down field, what adjustments are being made by the coordinators in-game, how are weak spots being masked by the schemes, etc...

If a football writer is unable to speak to these issues during a season, then he/she is in essence an entertainment journalist.

In the NBA and NFL, one can't be competent unless they understand the salary structure backwards and forwards.  

Good writing is a plus, certainly.  However I'd rather read middling writing about the game theory aspects of sports, than brilliant writing about infotainment pablum.

I think the thing I try to keep in mind when it comes to sports is that the reason I watch them is for relaxation.  Granted, I do seem to take a little bit of my identity from being an A's fan and all that entails, but it is, after all, sports.  I love sports.  I love to watch them, I love to play them, and I've been known to enjoy debating them.

But they are sports.  They are played.  And it is a game.  As much as I hate Kirk Gibson, the fact that Byrnes can't touch home plate, Jeremy can't slide, and the Reds swept us, none of these things seriously alter my existence.  Sports are essentially a form of relaxation.  When I start taking my relation too seriously, it becomes much less relaxing.

I know this is a fan site, so the opinions and personalities present are going to naturally be more intense.  But it is still a game, and for me, it's more about the feeling I get when I go to the park--the grass, the green and gold, the Saag's--the feeling I get when I hear Korach call the game (or when I used to hear Bill--go vote, bitches)--and, yes, the feeling I get when I see the A's win, and the depression that follows an A's loss.  That's why I watch them, and whether a reporter "accurately" covers the team or not really does not affect any of that.  At all.

Of course, that's me, and I'm open to that being a personal experience and not your experience.

is what I want from all journalists: accurate information, a wide range of perspectives, interesting insights, the kind of context that comes from knowing your subject and following it over time.

I'm very satisfied with what I get from Susan Slusser.  I consider her to be an exemplary beat writer.  While she can assume that most of her readers are fans of the A's, it is not part of her mission to promote or protect baseball, MLB, the A's or their players in particular, and I never get the feeling that she's trying to do that.  

Mychael Urban's job seems to me to be rather different.  He works for MLB.com, and like the other writers there, they employ him in order to drive traffic to the team websites so that people buy more tickets, watch more games, sign up for more MLB products.  His mission is not to provide unbiased information about the team, so I think it's to his credit and that of his editors and managers that there is some edge to his writing.  

As far as the AN front page writers, let me just say that I didn't find half as much thoughtful concern for the standards of journalism expressed in the professional full-time newsroom where I recently worked as I do here.  

Speaking professionally ... a good editor is what makes a good sportswriter.

Dross into gold, dross into gold.

on this site to write with honesty. I don't expect them to be afraid of Beane or any of the other people associated with the Oakland A's. The fear gets in the way of real evaluation . If some information or interviews never happen because of that ...so be it. It's worth the exchange IMO.

First I have to share something I read in my "Quotable Baseball Fanatic" that might just capture the mood of AN the last couple of days. This one from the Babe Himself:

"I don't mind being called a prick or a cocksucker or things like that. I expect that. But lay off the personal stuff."

I grew up before ESPN and the internet and sport talk shows, so I depended soley on the local newspaper and evening news for coverage on the A's (Blez, the SF bias back then was ridiculous, even during the championship years). In those days the beat writers had the exclusives, not like today, where everyone and his mother is on the story.

I kind of miss that.

I used to look for a writer to paint a picture, to make me wish I was there...or glad that I wasn't.

The writers of today aren't like that. As the nostalgia has dissipated (no matter what Dane Cook says), today's writer appears to be faced with the challenge of reporting facts sprinkled with a fair share of wit, sarcasm, and pop culture.

How often does AN itself get off the topic of baseball onto, well, whatever it damn pleases?

And don't get me wrong, I find it very entertaining. Ah, the key word- the first word in ESPN. Entertainment. It's not just about the "S" anymore. We need the "E", too. (And not just in our journalists but at the games, too. Dot Racing and such.)

What I don't like are reaction journalists. Someone that pens a column and waits for his in-box to fill up.

I admit, in my own writing, I tried the entertainment angle, even the reaction angle (most notably here, when I was getting a feel for this thing called blogging). But I know it doesn't work for me.

And while I can be witty and sarcastic, I prefer to do it the way the writers of yesterday did it: gather the facts and the stats and tell me a story.

Alas, I am afraid that there might not be a place for storytellers anymore. Or that- worse- there are no stories left worth telling.

Well, worth believing anyway.

This thread is hurting my head. Maybe I'll email Susan Slusser to ask for some Advil.

baseballgirl: Commendable attempt to steer the discourse down a more constructive path. You do not suck at writing.

As to the question of what makes a good sportswriter ... is it okay to say I don't care?

I'm not exactly renowned for concision, but I'll try here:

1] Best to seek out felicitous prose somewhere other than sports pages.

2] These days, much (most?) beat writer output is redundant (game recaps, etc.).

3] Insider tales of clubhouse unrest are the opposite of fascinating.

4] As are anecdotes about pets and girlfriends and video game prowess.

5] If access translates to insight or analysis that I can't get from the zillion other baseball-devoted media outlets out there in the Interuniverse, great. Happy to read it. If it translates to wispy proclamations like "the A's might look for an outfield bat this winter", no thanks.

6] As someone mentioned above, sportswriter chops, in the grand scheme of things, simply aren't that important. I care whether or not the Washington Post Beijing Bureau Chief knows what he's doing. I think it's critical that DoD correspondents ask Bob Gates hard questions. Etc. John Shea? Not so much.

Right. Just because I numbered it doesn't make it concise. Or even moderately lucid. Whatever. Sue me.

So maybe beat reporters are kind of an anachronism, but AN is pretty awesome. I spend half my free time rooting for fevered disagreements over Rule 5 strategy or platoon splits to break out between grover, devo, PaulThomas, etc. I look forward to watching stream of consciousness pun-fests careen out of control in the DLD, and to perusing thoughtful pieces like the one notsellingjeans just posted. I even read with relish when the the occasional "meaning of the universe as it relates to post-game interview cliches, Medieval Christendom, atheists in public life, and Todd Helton" debate bubbles to the surface.

I think, actually, that there is an argument to be made for limiting the extent of playermanagementmedia/AN intermingling. Not interviews, necessarily, but what happens if/when the objects of our passion/analysis/criticism become known, regular members of the community? Might our collective disdain for Bobby Crosby's ability be less pronounced if he were a regular poster? And if so, would that be good or bad? Maybe a pervasive politeness would result, and it would all be to the good. Maybe nothing would change. But it's also possible that a dull, keep-cheering passivity would permeate much of the discourse. A certain freedom (one that contributes crucially to the aforementioned awesomeness of the site) is derived from keeping the wall between "us" and "them" mostly intact, and as that wall becomes more porous, it's worth at least considering the impact.