Sports Journalism

So, who makes you angrier concerning release of the Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball on Thursday?
The cheats themselves: the players? Most athletes will do just about anything to achieve a competitive advantage. We’ve certainly see that play out in professional cycling. I feel sorriest for the players who refused to cheat and break the law, who lost their job to another athlete taking performance enhancing drugs. But I believe in collective guilt, too. If you know someone is cheating, and you don’t report it, then you’re part of the problem. Judge Landis had it right on that account with the Black Sox Scandal.
The owners? I have a particular anger with them, for they surely knew what was going on but chose to profit by it. Every time baseball has had a problem, whether it be the Black Sox Scandal or the Great Depression or the work stoppage a dozen years ago, baseball has used the home run to bring the fans back to the ballpark.
So, should we be angry with ourselves for turning our heads away from what was so obvious in front of us because we like — demand — home runs? Personally, I’d rather see Sandy Koufax pitch off a mound that was six inches higher 50 years ago and win a game 1-0. Home runs down excite me. Performance does. But fans love the moment, and the home run has always been THE moment in a baseball game.

I couldn’t begin to list all the excellent columns and stories about this shame on the game, but you can read the Mitchell Report yourself and take advantage of a searchable database to access specific sections. The New York Times has an excellent multimedia graphic on the named players.

Here are a few columns I highly recommend (Comm371 students are reminded that they must choose a sports columnist to follow throughout the semester):
— Tom Boswell of the WashPost: The Rocket’s Descent
— Jason Stark of ESPN: Many Legacies Will Be Tarnished Forever
— Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press: Baseball’s Culture of Steroids
— Harvey Araton of the NYTimes: All-Juice Team Has Finally Found Its Ace: Clemens
— William Rhoden of the NYTimes: Steroid Era Is No Longer Only About Bonds
— Joe Posnanski of the KCStar: Steroid Report Conclusion Obvious, Aftermatch Uncertain

Remember when sports was fun and the fans had a true connection with a team and its players?
Jeff Klein of the New York Time’ wonderful SlapShot blog alerted me to this video with his post:

Below, an amazing document of communion between hockey fans and players. It was recorded last Friday night in Martin, Slovakia, when perennial minnows MHC Martin beat HC Kosice in the Slovakian Extraliga and reached second place at the start of the two-week December break. After the game highlights, watch the unbelievable send-off the 4,000 fans at the Martin Winter Stadium give their players, and how much fun the players have giving back the love. It may be seven of the most amazing minutes of hockey footage you’ve ever seen.

That’s a question we’re going to be dealing with throughout the semester because that’s what many of you want to be — dream of being — a sportswriter.
I know what good sports writing is when I read it; don’t you? I have a collection of anthologies (“The Best American Sports Writing“) dating back to the first one in 1991.

My favorites? I always read Robert Lipsyte when he was writing for the New York Times. I thought what he had to say was important, though he would probably hate that description. His book, “SportsWorld: An American Dreamland,” is must reading (but it is rapidly falling out of print, so buy one now used while you can). Want a taste? Check out this column from 1991.

I also like Times columnist George Vecsey for his sociological approach to sport. I liked Detroit’s Joe Falls for his simplicity of style and the fact that nobody understood his city better.
And I am increasingly fond of Selena Roberts, who just left the Times for Sports Illustrated, for her language.
I like Mitch Albom when he’s paying attention to his craft. The extent of his cross-platform work too often makes his column writing for the Detroit Free Press secondary. But when he wants to be the best, Albom simply is.

And I like the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins (pictured), which brings me back to the point from which I began: What makes a great sportswriter?
Jenkins not only wrote the book (“It’s Not About the Bike“) on Lance Armstrong, but she wrote two (“Every Second Counts“). That’s enough to endear her to me. But she is also the only woman to win the APSE sports columnist award, and she’s won it twice (the only columnist to repeat other than that — yup — Mitch Albom).

So, if you’re the Washington Post and you’re publishing a series about presidential political candidates called “The Front-Runners,” who do you go to for great writing? Sportswriters. And who do you go to first? Sally Jenkins.
Jenkins’ lead-off (it works here, right?) piece for the series on Hillary Clinton is positively riveting — just a great piece of writing whether or not you like Hillary, politics or sports. It’s simply worth reading to read.
The second piece in the series on Mitt Romney went to another Post sportswriter, Eli Saslow; the third on John Edwards to Sue Anne Pressley Montes (to my disappointment, not a sportswriter — but they still lead, 2-1!). I thought the Post was going to be real clever and assign each lead story to a sportswriter.

But what does this say about sportswriters? For me, it’s that sportswriters make great takeout writers, no matter what or who the subject. It also points out that Jenkins and Saslow don’t live in a bubble. Sport World (as opposed to Lipsyte’s “SportsWorld” — you’ll have to read the book to understand the difference) is part of our world, and great sportswriters understand that. Lance could have had anyone write his books. He chose Sally Jenkins. Lance is no dummy.

One last word on the Post series, which continues all week: For each candidate, the Post examines “How (S)He’s Running” (political writer Dan Balz), “How (S)He Looks” (Pulitzer Prize winning fashion writer Robin Givhan) and “How (S)He Talks” (political writer Dana Milbank). As we sports folks say, this is great stuff. You don’t want to miss it.

So, let’s hear from you:
— Who’s YOUR favorite sportswriter? Why?
— Would you have the guts to assign a sportswriter to do a major political profile?
— Does Jenkins pull off the Hillary Clinton piece?

One last reference for you: Check out the Q&A with Jenkins on her story and look for these questions:
— How did a sports columnist get the assignment?
— Just curious as to whether you think your own background having a renowned sportswriter as your father [Dan Jenkins], and how he influenced your own writing/attitude towards sports, may have affected the way in which you approached this story?
— How did your relationship with your father inform your reporting and questions to Hilary regarding her relationship with her father?
— Do you believe [Hillary Clinton’s] flip-flopping from being a life-long Cubs fan to a Yankees fan hurt her in the nomination process?

Our friend and favorite Washington Post columnist, Michael Wilbon, isn’t surprised again (he wasn’t surprised, either, when he first learned that Sean Taylor had been shot), this time about the length of Michael Vick’s sentence (see item below).
Wilbon writes that Vick repeatedly lied throughout the criminal investigation and that it was highly unlikely that he was going to get a shorter sentence than his partners in the crime.
Like Wilbon and fellow Post sports writer Len Shapiro (who will speak to our Sports Writing and Reporting class this spring about his Taylor column), I have to admit that I wasn’t surprised at first about Taylor’s untimely and unfortunate death based on my own limited knowledge of the man. In retrospect, my sense of Taylor has changed, although I found the Post coverage excessive.
Shapiro, who is white, has been castigated in the media over expressing his lack of surprise when he learned Taylor had been shot. Wilbon, who is black, has escaped similar criticism.
So I ask: What was YOUR reaction when you FIRST heard about Taylor? Were you surprised it was Taylor? Shapiro will be addressing it in class. But we can address the subject here and now.

You can make your own suggestion, or I’ll fill you in Tuesday …

OK, it’s Tuesday, so I’ll tell you that Phoenix coach and all-time all-timer Wayne Gretzky is yelling because “I was an emotional player, and now as a coach I’m an emotional coach.”

You can read all about it in this New York Times story (the Times photo above is by David Kadlubowski), but you can hear Gretzky in his own words in this excellent Times multimedia slideshow that complements the story and illustrates the multi-dimensional approach that newspapers and journalists MUST take in order to fully report on the news today.

Do you have the skills, know the tools and have the attitude to produce a story and package like this? If not, you want to complement what you learn in Sports Writing and Reporting with Comm361/Online Journalism, which is offered both spring and fall semester. I teach the spring section (in which we also utilize our collaboration with C-SPAN for video conference opportunities) and Howard Kamen, assistant sports editor of USA Today, teaches the fall section.

Here’s the scoop on …

BJ Koubaroulis is a sports writer with the Washington Post and the play-by-play voice of high school and college sports for Verizon FiOS1 Sports. Koubaroulis is a featured blogger with Sports Illustrated [and, hopefully, on this blog!].

Michael Vick got 23 months for his participation in a dogfighting operation at his southeastern Virginia home.
Was it a fair sentence (for the uninitiated on this blog, that’s an invitation to comment here; you can also read the comments to the Washington Post story)?
Juliet Macur of the New York Times has a story online. I sure wish the Times would include time stamps (the Washington Post does, although I’d prefer a time log on update stories). For you aspiring journalists, that’s how it’s done these days: web first. Get the attitude if you want to succeed.
To be honest, the best coverage BEYOND the story these days is from blogs, like the Post’s Mark Maske‘s “NFL Insider.”

Why Gunston?
Because Gunston is the mascot George Mason University would like to kill but can’t.
It’s kinda like blogging: the habit many of us would like to kill and can’t.
And why would we want to?
Blogging is writing, and the more you write, the better you’ll write — especially if you edit your writing.
And anyone who knows me knows that editing means rereading, revising, rewriting and proofreading.
Even on a blog (or in e-mail).
So, in the spirit of editing, here’s a video to start off what I hope will become a gathering place for current and past students of this class as well as other area journalists and guests. I hope to collaborate with my friend, Joe Gisondi, the academic advisor of the student newspaper at Eastern Illinois University and author of the fine On Sports blog.
I’ll be introducing other contributors to this blog, and I expect my students will be introducing themselves as well in the near future.
Together, we’ll all tickle Gunston.