Look for the unusual; spend less ink on team sports.
The world of sports reporting: full of clichés, bad metaphors and meaningless statistics. Right? Well, not necessarily.
Sports journalism can be dynamic, interesting, informative and original. For student journalists who aspire to become professional sports reporters, collegiate athletics provide an excellent opportunity to develop reporting skills by covering organized sports. Moreover, good sports reporters at student newspapers can become authorities in sports they cover.
Writing Sports Stories
The main elements of a good sports story are a catchy lead, clear focus and lots of quotes. Often you'll find that good sports stories combine background and statistical information, the writer's paraphrasing of a source's quotes and quotes themselves in a seamless fashion. If an article flows nicely and tells the story, the reader may not even notice the writer. This is good.
Keep your paragraphs short, since newspaper columns are thin and long paragraphs can be hard on the eyes. Sports writing is full of devices that can be tough to master, but are effective when they are used correctly.
Sports coverage can be divided into four kinds of stories: sports news, game results, profiles and opinionpieces. A scan of the sports section in the daily newspaper will tell you that sports stories rarely fall into any other classification. Covering a particular team or writing a lot of sports stories, you will get to try each kind of article.
Sports News Articles
These stories are news articles about sports. They should be balanced and be written in an "inverted pyramid" style: the important info at the front of the article and the less important background stuff at the bottom. This way, the editor can cut from the bottom of the story if it is too long rather than taking time to find the right paragraph to chop. Please don't make me search for the score deep in the story. About 500 words is usually an adequate length for a sports news story.
Some examples of sports news stories are: hiring of a new coach, changes in the athletic budget, stories on facilities and drug use among campus athletes. Here is a blueprint for a sports news story:
Step No. 1 Use a lead which gets the readers' attention. Try to make it answer as many of the five "W"s (who, what, when, where, and why) and an "H" (how) as possible. Here is an example: Simon Fraser University's Terry Fox running track is a lurking menace, says an SFU coach, and it doesn't look like a replacement is coming anytime soon. When writing ledes try to use the active voice. This way you can emphasize the current situation.
Step No. 2 Here is the where the meat of the story is found. Make sure you put the most important information on top, and the least important at the bottom. As well, have no more than one thought per sentence. Aim for clarity rather than flowery language.
Step No. 3 Conclusion. Do not editorialize in the conclusion or sum up your article. End your story with the least important fact you have or with an interesting quote. Sometimes, your conclusion may be cut out, if an editor has to fit your story in a tight space.
Game Results Articles
Sports reporting is unique from other areas in a student newspaper. Unlike sections like news, you will end up meeting with the same people on a regular basis a lot of the time. This includes the coaches and players of the teams you are covering. This applies especially to game results stories.
News This type of article summarizes a game and gives a few post-game quotes from the players and/or coaches. They are time-sensitive. If the article is not run immediately after the game, it is old news. Because most student papers are published weekly or even monthly, game results articles are old hat when we get around to printing them. For that reason try to avoid them, reserving them only for especially important games.
Profiles Profiles are feature-style articles that highlight the story or achievements of a particular athlete, coach or team. They tend to be longer than regular sports stories "somewhere between 700 and 900 words" and require more research than in sports news stories. While sports news stories are written in the past tense (e.g. "The field was horrible," Smith said ), profiles often are written in the present tense (e.g. "I always trained on that field," Smith says ).
Opinion Pieces Some student newspapers have sports columnists, while others accept opinion submissions from writers-at-large. Either way, opinion pieces are a good way to inject color and life into a sports section. If you get called upon to write an opinion piece, it should be between 400 and 600 words and focused on a specific issue relevant to the athletics your paper covers.
Interviews You can sometimes get more background information about a subject in the interview, but by then you should know a good deal about your subject anyway. The main purpose of the interview is to obtain quotes that legitimize and back up the story you are telling in the article.
Sports reporting is unique from other areas in a student newspaper. Unlike sections like news, you will end up meeting with the same people on a regular basis a lot of the time. This includes the coaches and players of the teams you are covering. This applies especially to game results stories.
News This type of article summarizes a game and gives a few post-game quotes from the players and/or coaches. They are time-sensitive. If the article is not run immediately after the game, it is old news. Because most student papers are published weekly or even monthly, game results articles are old hat when we get around to printing them. For that reason try to avoid them, reserving them only for especially important games.
Profiles Profiles are feature-style articles that highlight the story or achievements of a particular athlete, coach or team. They tend to be longer than regular sports stories "somewhere between 700 and 900 words" and require more research than in sports news stories. While sports news stories are written in the past tense (e.g. "The field was horrible," Smith said ), profiles often are written in the present tense (e.g. "I always trained on that field," Smith says ).
Opinion Pieces Some student newspapers have sports columnists, while others accept opinion submissions from writers-at-large. Either way, opinion pieces are a good way to inject color and life into a sports section. If you get called upon to write an opinion piece, it should be between 400 and 600 words and focused on a specific issue relevant to the athletics your paper covers.
Interviews You can sometimes get more background information about a subject in the interview, but by then you should know a good deal about your subject anyway. The main purpose of the interview is to obtain quotes that legitimize and back up the story you are telling in the article.
Final Thoughts On Sports Stories
Using Quotes:
Make sure your quotes add to the story. Do not use a quote that can be turned into text, like a coach saying what their team's record is. And avoid anything that remotely smells of, "We gave 110 per cent," or "We will fight to the end." If it is a cliché discard it. Instead, aim for quotes like this one."This was a game you regret the money you spent on the officials," Hillis said.The person being quoted is James Hillis, a University of Regina basketball coach who is speaking after his team suffered a terrible loss.
Remember, unless it's an opinion piece the reader is more interested in what the athletes and coaches have to say than what some student journalist thinks. The best interviews are casual, like conversations with acquaintances. Go into an interview with a short list of five or six open-ended questions to get your subjects talking if you ask the right questions, people will usually provide lots of quotes without much provocation. Stay on your toes and take notes so you can ask follow-up questions based on their answers.
Thanks to Darren Steinke and Mason Wright