The Sports Writing Handbook

Thomas Fensch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136689857
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Completely revised and updated in a second edition, this volume represents the only book ever written that analyzes sports writing and presents it as "exceptional" writing. Other books discuss sports writers as "beat reporters" in one area of journalism, whereas this book shows aspiring sports writers a myriad of techniques to make their writing stand out. It takes the reader through the entire process of sports writing: observation, interviewing techniques, and various structures of articles; types of "leads;" transitions within an article; types of endings; use of statistics; do's and don'ts of sports writing; and many other style and technique points. This text provides over 100 examples of leads drawn from newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and also offers up-to-date examples of sports jargon from virtually every major and minor sport played in the U.S.

Chapter One

The Art of the Interview

Being an exceptional sports writer simply means being an exceptional interviewer— the writing pales if the interviewing skills are mediocre. You can’t use in print what you don’t get during an interview.

Some techniques are simply timeless. Consider the following three quotations, the first from William Zinsser’s (1985) book, On Writing Well, An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction; the second is from John Brady’s (1976) The Craft of Interviewing; and the last is from DeWitt Reddick’s (1949) Modern Feature Writing.

These guidelines are as important today as when they were first published:

Interviewing is one of those skills that you only get better at. You will never again feel so ill at ease as when you try for the first time, and probably you will never feel entirely comfortable prodding another person for answers that he or she may be too shy to reveal, or too inarticulate. But at least half of the skill is purely mechanical. The rest is instinct—knowing how to make the other person relax, when to push, when to listen, when to stop. And this can be learned with experience. (Zinsser, 1985, p. 79)

Interviewing is the modest, immediate science of gaining trust, then gaining information. Both ends must be balanced if the interview is to be balanced and incisive. Yet they are often fumbled in the anxious heat of an interview. The interviewer will either yeam too desperately for his subject’s trust and evoke flatulence, or he will restrain his sympathies, demand data—and get like in return. (Brady, 1976, p. 68)

The writer should prepare in, advance many of the questions he plans to ask. These questions should not be haphazard and unrelated, but should spring from the central idea of the story, as he sees it. Preferably he should visualize two or three possible lines of development for the story, and think out questions along each line; thus he will be prepared to adjust himself to the line which seems most promising during the interview. The beginner will find it helpful to write out his leading questions; most experienced writers may prefer to think clearly through the story as it may develop along three or four angles, and to carry these lines of thought in mind. (Reddick, 1949, p. 94)

There are a variety of techniques and tricks of the trade regarding the art and craft of interviewing. Many can simply be summarized. Some rules and guidelines for interviewing may easily be recognized by novice writers—others, however, are matters of psychology and perception that may require some experience. Understanding these advanced principles and ideas may help the novice or intermediate interviewer obtain much more valuable interviews. (The techniques and guidelines in this chapter refer largely to the person-to-person interview. On occasion, however, the telephone interview or the mail response may be used.)

In this chapter, suggestions and guidelines are offered, generally in order from the basic to the most advanced and in the most logical order.

Read all you can about your subject before the interview. If you work for a newspaper, ask your newspaper librarian to dig up back files for you. Read everything in newspaper or magazine form that has been published about your subject. This will allow you to . . .

Prepare in advance. Write down likely questions. Both DeWitt Reddick and John Brady refer to the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. There is no substitute for preparation. If you prepare for two or three or four avenues of interview development, the more information you will obtain and the less likely you will be to be caught off guard mentally during an interview.

Time the interview to fit your subject's schedule. Change your own schedule first, if possible. Don’t inconvenience the subject’s time for your own schedule. If you have a deadline for the story, however, mention that. The subject will usually be willing to meet with you at a time that will allow you to complete the article prior to the deadline.

Be patient. If you are interviewing someone on the edges of the sports world, this might be the first time they have been interviewed. Many people are unacquainted with reporters or interviewers. In “The Interview or The Only Wheel in Town,” the Journalism Monographs' Eugene J. Webb and Jerry Salancik (1966) suggested that there may be problems regarding your subject’s answers:

1. The potential source may not know the information (the reporter seeks).
2. The source may be aware and want to tell but lacks the verbal skills to do so.
3. The source may be willing but not want to tell.
4. The source may be willing but unable to produce the information because it is buried beyond his conscious ability to recall it.(p. 21)

Ask questions in chronological order. If you are interviewing for a personality portrait or profile, proceeding through these five areas may give you comprehensive answers:

1. Birth—location and date—and youth;
2. Education;
3. Military service if any—dates, specialty, and location;
4. Marriage—including spouse’s name and age of children, if any;
5. Career—to date.

Ask for dates. Ages, dates of marriage, beginning of career, career achievements— the subject’s ages at those times. These dates supply readers with a ready reference to parallel their own life to the life of your subject.

Ask why questions. These demand the subject explain positions, career choices, and beliefs.

Why do you believe such-and-such?

If this is your best season as player, why?

Why is this team better than last year?

Why do you believe your coaching techniques are better than your opposition?

In addition to why questions, the how or how did it happen question may be equally important. Professional athletes may not be articulate enough to explain why something happened—why they have a particularly distinct golf swing or why they have a trademark style, or even why they chose a particular play at a particular time.

It might be more productive to ask: “Show me what you do—demonstrate your swing for me. . .. Show me what you did at that time. . .. How did you do that?”

In watching the how's of their technique, you may also be able to determine the why's—why they play the way they do.

Get a telephone number for any additional trivial details you may need to call back for. Don’t drive across town for two or three additional questions if you can make a telephone call. If the subject has an unlisted telephone, promise you won’t disclose it to others, and keep your promise.

Interview all possible sources. If you are interviewing Bonnie Blair or Picabo Street, two U.S. winners in the 1994 Olympics, for instance, ask them who else should be interviewed: parents, coaches, teammates, or others. The question often arises: How do I know when I have enough interviews for a major story? The cynical answer is: When is your deadline? How much time do you have, working backward from that time, to get interviews done and the story written?

The ideal answer is to interview until you come full circle. During every interview, you should ask, “Who else should I talk to?” If you are interviewing A for a major story, and A tells you to talk to B, C, and D, you work your way around the subject until persons X, Y, and Z tell you to see B, C, and D. When you have run out of interview subjects around A, it’s time to start to write the story; or, when you begin to hear the same anecdotes from a variety of subjects, it’s time to begin the writing process.

It is seldom good practice to arbitrarily limit yourself to five interviews or six or seven. How do you know that the eighth or ninth or tenth would not have given you the best material for your story?

Don't be a cheerleader. Asking a question like, “Sure was a good game, wasn’t it coach?” leads to a laconic answer: “Yep.” That is a very small crumb to use in your story. Even breaking the ice in a conversation with a comment like that is a lame beginning.

Be aware that many coaches and some players expect you to “be on their side.” Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight and many others adopt an “us against the media” attitude. As a sports writer, you have at least four choices when encountering these defensive (no pun intended) individuals:

1. Negotiate with them if they show an aggressive attitude toward you as an interviewer.
2. Interview assistant coaches—or “interview around the subject.”
3. Trade notes with a reporter from a noncompeting publication. If you work for a newspaper that covers Bobby Knight’s team, trade notes with a newspaper reporter in a noncompeting area.
4. Use the coach’s belligerent attitude in the story—as accurately as possible. If he gets into trouble from the story, that’s his problem, not your problem as a reporter.

Don't fail to ask the obvious.

Why did you, coach, go for that field goal instead of a pass? Why did you play for a tie instead of a win?

Why did you call for that particular play on the 37 with a minute and a half left in the game?

Games seldom explain themselves fully. Ask about the key play that won the game—or lost it—for a particular coach or team.

If you are a print reporter, learn as much as you can about tape recorders, modem connections, video cameras, and the like. Radio and TV reporters, for the most part, are adept at electronic equipment. Print reporters are less so. But there is little reason why, in these days, print reporters should not use quality tape recorders. And there are several good reasons why they should. If you are working on a controversial story about, for instance, ticket scalping, or illegal university football payoffs, interviews on tape are a sure source of proof of what exactly was said. This sort of taped proof is a good—although not complete—defense against a charge of libel, or a defense against a slightly less dangerous charge: “I was misquoted.”

If you have the luxury to delay completing a story for a few days, or don’t have an immediate deadline, the tape will stay fresh. It will be as easy to use several days, months, or years later, as it was the day it was made.

One key tip that many reporters do not use: If the first draft of a lengthy story “falls flat” or toneless and if the style is not exactly what the writer intended, or if the story has a lack of focus or is weak in transitions or style, reading the story onto tape and listening to it may help the reporter find dead spots that will have to be rewritten.

The reporter should go into an interview situation with the recorder ready for use. The reporter should proceed with the explanation (if an explanation is needed) that the tape will make the interview much more accurate and reliable. If the interview subject objects to a tape recording, then the reporter should go ahead with the interview without the tape—but should try first to negotiate with the subject that the tape is: (a) important, and (b) more accurate than handwritten notes. Few people these days object to tape recordings. (Hint: The reporter might offer to have a duplicate tape made for the subject—to reassure the subject that quotes used in the article were accurately taken from the tape. The cost is minimal and the good will earned is priceless.)

Avoid the moral problems of using “off the record” remarks. What if, during an interview, someone says to you “I’ll tell you what you need to know, but don’t quote me.” What do you do?

First, don’t agree to any conditions. Don’t use the material you hear. If you use it without citing the source, what could be the result? Your interview subject may simply be lying to you and manipulating you (for his or her own purposes). If you didn’t confirm the material and if you didn’t use his or her name as the source, who is responsible for any potential libel suit? Whose name is on the byline?

As Leonard Koppett (1981) wrote, in Sports Illusion, Sports Reality: A Reporter's View of Sports, Journalism and Society:

People have all sorts of ideas, opinions, judgments and intentions that they don’t want to see attributed to them in print or on the air. As a reporter, you want to know as many of these things as you can, to increase your understanding of what goes on around you. So you must follow strictly two self-imposed limitations: Confidentiality and relevance.

Some of the varieties of confidentiality are:

1. Off the record. Don’t say I told you, but use the information if you can substantiate it some other way.
2. Know but don’t use. Be aware that such-and-such is the situation, but don’t make it public until I say O.K.
3. Not for attribution. Go ahead and use the information the way I’m giving it to you, but don’t say it came from me.
4. Private. Here’s what happened, but does it really have to be made public?
5. Top secret. If this gets out, I’m finished; let your conscience be your guide, (p. 149)

The reporter may have to determine which of these guidelines applies to the situation at hand, then work accordingly. Sometimes an agreement can be worked out with the interview subject in a nonverbal way; the reporter may say, “This is not for attribution to you?” The subject may agree with a wink and a grin.

Koppett (19...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Chapter One: The Art of the Interview
• Chapter Two: The Art of Observation
• Chapter Three: Page One, Paragraph One—Story Leads: Types and Techniques
• Chapter Four: Quick ‘n’ Dirty Guide to Sports Leads
• Chapter Five: Outlining and Transitions
• Chapter Six: Two Types of Article Structures: The Inverted Pyramid and the Diamond Structure
• Chapter Seven: Other Structures
• Chapter Eight: Techniques for Effective Endings
• Chapter Nine: Guidelines for Writing About Women
• Chapter Ten: Writing Advance Stories
• Chapter Eleven: Developing a Sports Feature From a Sports News Event
• Chapter Twelve: Writing the Investigative Sports Article
• Chapter Thirteen: Writing Editorials, Opinion Articles, and Columns
• Chapter Fourteen: Seven Common Stylistic Errors Sports Writers Should Avoid
• Chapter Fifteen: End Note: “Football minus frills—and drills”
• Glossary of Newspaper and Magazine Terms
• Glossary of Sports Terms
• Selected Readings
• References
• Name/Title Index
• Subject Index