Jeff Kryglik’s recent piece for The Sports Column on sports journalism raises important questions. Jeff closed the piece by asking: “What’s your definition of journalism?” I took a shot at answering: Journalism is a public service expressed as an art. It informs, educates & provokes thought. It’s done w integrity & resolve. 1:53 PM – 27 Feb 2015
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It’s a reasonable response. But sportswriting isn’t one thing; it’s many things. Because different types of sportswriting serve different functions any robust definition needs to be evaluated through the lens of diversity. How would my definition stand up to that standard?
Let’s revisit my definition after reviewing four types of sportswriting. The types are game reporting, sports analysis & interpretation, “beat writing,” and sports commentary (my specialty).
Before I get into details, let me flash forward to the take-away message: I learned a lot from the analysis, especially about the politics of sports journalism. You’ll see what I mean as you read along.
Game reporting is “the meat and potatoes” of sports journalism. It’s vital to sports fans everywhere because, through it, writers describe what happened during games. Interpretation is left to a minimum; opinions get in the way of providing an unfettered description of what took place. Game reporting is found in every sport with a reasonable fan following. Here’s an article on game reporting: it’s on college basketball, published in The Chicago Tribune.
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In sports analysis and interpretation writers offer a cerebral perspective on athletes, teams, leagues, circumstances, and issues facing a sport, including its status and future. Writers are students of the game. Like professors engaged in writing an academic article sports journalists draw on numbers, history, the literature and other details to analyze circumstances and substantiate interpretations. Here’s an article on sports analysis and interpretation: it’s on Major League Baseball, published in Grantland.
“Beat reporting” is an iconic brand of sportswriting, the type featured in Hollywood films. A reporter follows a team and writes persistently and extensively about players, coaches, management, and myriad other things associated with a team. Beat reporting combines game reporting with sports analysis and interpretation—often not in the same article—but in articles published sequentially with game reporting coming first. Here’s an article authored by Katherine Terrell, a New Orleans Saints beat writer, who writes for NO’s major newspaper, The Times-Picayune.
Sports commentary is critique. Commentators look at sports though a critical lens. Sports commentary includes sports analysis and interpretation, but it must (by definition) do more. Its center of gravity is positionality: a writer takes a clear and strong position on a topic, a stance that’s often reflected in the headline. Consider Art Chang’s article on the NFL and domestic abuse: “NFL is Making Domestic Assault Worse.”
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What about the politics of sports journalism, the topic I mentioned earlier? Let’s take an example.
While it would make sense for beat reporters to be sports commentators, too, there’s something to be said about paying a mortgage and putting food on the table. Sports commentary and beat reporting don’t mix well. Think about it: a beat writer meets with team players, coaches, and management regularly. The reporter’s value rests on having access and being able to “get the scoop.” What happens when there’s too much critique, when too many questions are raised?
How do beat writers manage this dilemma? One way is to report a controversial matter without offering an interpretation or giving an opinion. In other words, treat it as “news” and let readers respond. That way you put the matter “out there,” but do it without taking a stand.
Here’s an illustration. Last week, beat writers covering a team for a mid-market daily newspaper reported what a coach said during a press conference. The coach made inflammatory comments (for self-serving reasons, in my judgment) about an athletic issue that’s in the national news. He inarguably shouldn’t have said what he said, but I couldn’t find an article from the beat writers that “called him on it.” Instead, I found a flattering article about the coach, a piece that evaluated him quite positively in relationship to his peers.
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While the sports public isn’t well served by this brand approach, can you blame beat writers? One way of answering the question is to acknowledge (as I asserted earlier) that different types of sportswriting serve different functions. Those functions are performed in different settings, too. Beat writers have relationships with team principals. Sports commentators don’t need to be close to the team. Politically, it’s better if they don’t.
Some of the best sports commentators work for national publications, and a good number of them are women—Christine Brennan, Sally Jenkins, and Nancy Armour come to mind. Their survivability isn’t contingent on getting the next scoop; it’s related to stepping back and taking a longer and impersonal view of an issue, a team, a coach, an athlete, and a sport. It’s important work.
Some sports commentators take a consistent brand of positionality in all of their writing. Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, is a leading name in that regard. Zirin and his publication take a Progressive perspective on social and political issues. Among other things Zirin is well known for his perspective on the name of the DC football team (he wants it changed) and The International Olympic Committee (he believes it’s one of the world’s worst trans-national corporations).
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How does my definition of sports journalism hold up after reviewing a few types of sportswriting? All sportswriting is a public service; there’s a lot of art in all of the forms; and all sportswriters need to exhibit integrity in conjunction with what they write. But there are differences, too. With that in mind I picked out one word to describe the core contribution of each type:
Game reporting: It informs.
Sports analysis and interpretation: It educates.
Beat reporting: It provokes thought.
Sports commentary: It takes (writer) resolve.
That analysis is overly simplistic in one way, but it helps focus understanding in another way. Important to me is being able to write truthfully and directly about issues in sports–a critical public service performed by sports journalists. But performing that function often comes with a price tag … a price paid by the sportswriter.
What do I mean? Sports commentary often comes on the heels of national headlines, as it did after the “Ray Rice video” surfaced. And if there’s anything I learned from years as a sociologist it’s this: those who enter a controversy become part of a controversy. It’s difficult to get involved without becoming involved—often in ways you’d rather avoid.
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That saying applies to sports commentators. Here’s an example. The sports issue: the NCAA penalties levied recently against Syracuse University and its Hall of Fame basketball coach, Jim Boeheim. The sports commentator: Christine Brennan of USA Today.
It’s not as though Brennan is the only sportswriter who wrote about the SU situation. The penalties made national news and, because of that, it drew the attention of a number of sports journalists. Here are two examples:
Analysis and Interpretation (from The New York Times): “…academic scandals like those at Syracuse…can rupture the uneasy relationship between sports and the academy.”
Commentary (from The Washington Post): “The systemic rot in college athletics starts up high, not down low…. There is a common theme to the scandal stories plaguing college athletics this week: the enabling, if not outright collusion, by some of the supposedly highest-minded people on campus, those pipe-tamping, mortarboard-wearing guardians of integrity called chancellors and presidents.”
But Brennan’s commentary was among the first to be published and it ran with a provocative title: “After a decade of NCAA violations, how in the world is Jim Boeheim keeping his job?” She wrote: “What was happening on Boeheim’s watch should be appalling to anyone who still cares about the rules in college sports, if any of those people still exist. It also wasn’t just one thing, or two. It was more than 10 years of things, lots of things, all of which fall under the umbrella of cheating.”
Brennan describes in detail the litany of sins that led to the NCAA’s ruling: instances of academic fraud; institutional non-responsiveness to athletes’ failed blood tests; and an improper financial relationship with a local youth organization. It’s the very stuff that invites (“screams”) sports commentary.
The problem—and it’s always the problem in controversies, sports controversies included—is that people line up on the “other side.” They defend. They point to other people and places that “are worse.” They deny it happened. They minimize the wrongdoing.
The guilty are seen as innocent and those who cry “Foul!” are attacked. That’s exactly what happened to Brennan. A relatively small percentage of Comments offered by readers included words of support. Many comments were expressed as ad hominem attacks.
“The real question, how can Brennan keep her job?”
“Because Christine you aren’t his boss. Also his teams win.”
“Brennan: Two things are for sure: 1) If you lose your job at the “newspaper” you can always upgrade to the National Enquirer. 2) You will never be idolized.”
“Cheating is very common today. Challenge is not getting caught, but punishment here is light, so why not cheat?”
“Put any school’s sports under the intense microscope SU was subjected to and guaranteed—violations will be discovered.”
“What did Boeheim do wrong? …big deal…. Let us know when the NCAA comes down on KY, Duke, and NC.”
“You can be self-righteous about the SU situation when you tell me what will happen to UK and Calipari…and UNC for their classroom violations….”
“Hop on the bandwagon, Brennan. Where were you before this came out? Hop on the NCAA bandwagon. Boeheim deserves every chance. He bleeds Orange, HOF coach, donates and raises millions for charities. Ya, Syracuse should get rid of that guy!”
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Does any of this come as a surprise? Not really. Soon after reading Brennan’s article I happened to see ESPN’s piece about SU on “Outside the Lines” (aired on March 6). At one point in the program Bob Ley, the host, asked his guests about what seems to matter to SU fans. The answer? Recruiting. Will the scandal hurt SU’s recruiting?
That’s why sports commentary is so important. It holds up a mirror and asks: Do you like what you see?
Sometimes commentators go too far. They can let personal opinions, politics, and biases outweigh a measured critique. But we need sports commentary, good sports commentary. Otherwise the wrongs will be seen as right, and reform is less—not more—likely. As The New York Time’s columnist David Brooks wrote the other day: “social norms need repair up and down the scale” and now seems to be a time for a “moral revival.” His comments apply to sports, too.
It doesn’t take too long for inattention in sports to rule the day and for things to get out of hand, to hit a “crisis stage.” That’s why Jeff Kryglik’s question is important: What is sports journalism, “true” sports journalism?
You have my answer. What’s yours?
