Tag Archives: sports journalists

Nieman Lab: What we can learn from US sports journalists

Nieman Journalism Lab has an interesting post on recent innovations in online sports writing in the US.

Tim Carmody argues that all journalists, not just sports writers, can learn from developments the other side of the Atlantic.

The post directs us to SportsFeat “spotlighting well-crafted longform sports and sports-related writing”. Carmody explains that “most of the stories are current, but others reach into the archives even as they relate to the day’s news”.

Other sites to watch are Quickish, an aggregator of tweets and and SB Nation, which describes itself as “news, scores and fan opinion powered by 305 sports blogs” and a site former Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky, who is involved on the technology side, cites as “a testbed and lab for some of the newest and most interesting publishing tools I’ve ever seen”.

If there’s a common thread to all of these moves, it’s hybridisation and metastasis. The tools that drive compelling sports journalism on the web aren’t limited to sports. Nor are they exclusively held by sportswriters working for independent media companies.

As Rob Neyer wrote when he moved from ESPN to SB Nation, the new ethos in sports journalism, as elsewhere, seems to be breaking down the distinction between “us” and “them”. And this is a distinction that you can interpret much more broadly than one between writers and readers, pros and amateurs, sportswriting and non-sports writing. When the walls tumble, they tumble everywhere.

My bet is that this will be good for everyone – not just sports fans, sportswriters, and smart media companies, but everyone looking for new ways to read and write smart material on the web.

Nieman Lab’s full post is at this link.

The Drum: Newspapers ‘could introduce football Twitter reporter role’

The Drum is reporting that national newspapers “could introduce football Twitter reporter role”. That’s according to Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph football correspondent and columnist for the Sunday Telegraph.

@henrywinter has more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

“I think each sports desk could have someone solely concentrating on Twitter,” Winter said. “They’d talk to the fans about what’s happening during the game and report on the match as it is happening.

“I did an experiment where I spent a whole match not writing a report for the paper but just talking to fans on Twitter. The response was incredible.”

Speaking at the MPA’s National Newspaper Debate in Manchester, Winter said the thousands of messages he receives online had begun to inform his reporting.

Winter goes on to discuss how Twitter brings him closer to his audience but warned of the dangers or entering disputes with readers.

The Drum’s full article is at this link.

Sports Journalists’ Association: FT to drop Saturday Sports section

According to the Sports Journalists Association, the Financial Times ‘has decided to cut its sports coverage in the paper from the end of this month.’

“…features sub Charles Morris – who has edited the paper’s sports coverage – keeps his job, [but] the space dedicated to the subject, even in the £2.30 Weekend edition, will be cut as pagination is reduced,” the SJA reports on its blog.

Full story at this link…

Update: the FT confirmed to Journalism.co.uk that the weekly sports section will be cut from Saturday 14 February, ‘as part of a strategy to focus on our core strength,’ a spokesperson from the paper said. The paper had already limited its coverage to one day a week in 2007.