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Final Stretch?

The future of sports narrative

From Keith Goldberg:

Just read this story in Sunday's New York Post, from 1956 on the trade of Jackie Robinson.

You never see a news story written like this in a sports section any more. I'm halfway through the Best American Sports Writing of the Century, reading some great narrative newspaper pieces...all published at least 30 years ago. The annual BASW volumes are filled with great narrative pieces...nearly none of them from newspapers.

I'm loving all the enthusastic talk coming from the Nieman folks about working narrative journalism into newspapers. But as a guy who writes about the games people play, I sometimes wonder where my place is in all of this.

I'm fortunate enough to work at a paper that encourages narrative writing in its sports section. But how many other papers are like that? Not many. I read papers that have narrative pieces littered all over its pages...except in the sports section. Why?

Does narrative sports journalism have a future in newspapers?

Zack, any other sports people, I would love to get your take on this.

Comments

Re: Final Stretch?

I'm new to sports. I was always a metro GA until I joined the Sentinel in October. So, I'm really interested to hear what Zack and others with more experience say about this.
Sports is such a different world. Coming into it, I thought it would be the perfect setting for narrative -- you have winners and losers, comebacks, struggles, with a definite beginning and end (with momentum pushing toward the end -- win or lose?)
But, I've realized that writing games as narrative can get old really quickly, so you have to pick and choose. I think narrative in sports writing does have a future in newspapers -- as narrative does in all beats and sections. But, from my limited experience in sports, I think I need to work even harder to get past the game narrative and into athletes lives, their homes and heads and dreams. I also have a habit of making every story a narrative, which isn't good.
I don't know. Zack? Kruse? What do you guys think?

Re: Final Stretch?

Not every “sports” story should be done “narrative” or with “narrative elements,” obviously, for the same reason not every story period should be done that way. Game stories that actually READ like, well, game stories – they’re probably not real conducive to a full-fledged, front-to-back narrative. That’s called play-by-play (and, by the way, as a sports-y side note, I would advocate the utter elimination of most all gamers-as-gamers to begin with, although I know that sends almost everybody in the world of sports sections from coast to coast into reflexive “but you can’t DOOOOO that” soapbox sessions that typically involve raised voices and hurt feelings).

There are winners and losers and beginnings and middles and ends in sports stories, true, but there are winners and losers and beginnings and middles and ends in EVERY story EVERYWHERE. Well, that’s probably not totally true – most stories, at least, or for sure most stories worth writing. It’s just that all that tends to come more pie-easy pre-packaged in sports.

To a point.

Depends on what you’re trying to write out of sports. Are you someone who covers games or are you someone who writes stories about our games and the people who play them and watch them and love them?

I look for stories now on the business and courts beats – is that what I cover here in Hernando? – in the same ways I looked for stories when I was doing sports.

Some “sports” “narratives”:

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/27/Sports/Sleep_It_s_baseball_t.shtml

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/10/18/soxfans1.htm

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/09/20/mkside20.htm

http://www.th-record.com/archive/2005/04/12/mlba12.htm

Erin says she needs to work even harder to “get past the game narrative” and into her subject’s “homes and heads and dreams.” Don’t we all. It doesn’t matter what you cover: The “game narrative” is the facts; the “homes and heads and dreams” is the truth.

Show me scenes, show me dialogue, show me movement – the RIGHT scenes, the RIGHT dialogue, the RIGHT movement – and you’ll begin to get at something more than the “game” we’re all watching anyway.

Re: Final Stretch?

Keith says: Kruse, you ask whether a sportswriter covers games or write stories about the games. Why should these be mutually exclusive?

They shouldn't be. That's the point. But you know and I know how easy it is to get into the advance-gamer-notebook-folo cycle in sports.

I look at it this way: Being good in sports, being really, really good, is just as hard as it is to be really, really good in any other section of the paper -- but I also think it's WAY easier to be OK in sports than it is to be OK just about everywhere else.

And I'll admit this much: It was far easier when I was doing sports to idle for a week or two and still APPEAR to be doing my usual level of work than it was when I was doing the at-large gig at the Times Herald-Record, or the Goshen and Chester beats, or right now in Hernando, for that matter (as I log YET ANOTHER post on an overcast Monday on the North Suncoast).

None

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