OT: Sportswriting and Deadline Writing: Lost Skills

[tomcat]

If you're interested in what used to be the art of covering sports and news and other things for newspapers, coinsider this article in the Atlantic and consider reading the book it reviews.

The Lost Art of Deadline Writing

I was never a sports writer but was a reporter for more than a decade in the 70s and 80s when deadline writing was an essential skill. We were taught that you not only had to get the story and to get it right, but to get it in on deadline. The best story in the world was worthless if it didn't make the paper.

I have not read the book being reviewed here, but I am dead certain they got the process right. Sports writing, political writing, town council writing, makes no difference. The process was the same, and those who did it really, really well -- including some mentioned in this book -- were truly artists.

 

[Scud49]

I remember reading Bob Ryan's columns back in the 70's when I was in school in Boston. His style was a delight - there were a few times I didn't know I was reading about a basketball game until the end of the article.

 

[tomcat]

That whole Globe sports department was amazing through the 80s. Ryan, Peter Gammons, Ray Fitzgerald, Leigh Montvillem, Will McDoinough, John Powers and later Mike Madden and others. Top to bottom no paper could match the writing horsepower that department had back then.

 

[ThisJustIn]

AP has to get their game reports in 15 minutes after the final buzzer. Amazed at what they turn around. Lots of prep, lots of writing as the game progress, a recap of the first half during intermission (which is articles often start with the conclusion and then, suddenly, they're recapping the first half).

 

[Golden Husky]

AP has to get their game reports in 15 minutes after the final buzzer. Amazed at what they turn around. Lots of prep, lots of writing as the game progress, a recap of the first half during intermission (which is articles often start with the conclusion and then, suddenly, they're recapping the first half).

I wrote on deadline for many years, some of them before press box telephones and computers. We would call in our copy, dictating our deadline stories from a pay phone. I carried around a lot of dimes in those days. Yes, Justin, the lead usually is the last thing written. Lots of changes over the last half-century.

 

[tomcat]

Souinds just like the work I was doing. Covering a meeting in a tiny town in Rhode Island....having scouted the area prior to the meeting, heading off to a phone whiole the event is still going on...assuming the pay phone worked, dictating the story, then back to the meeting to catch the rest for the next day's evening paper. Looking back at it many years later, it was kinda fun and a very useful skill to learn. And sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) I'd even know what I wanted the lede to say before I finished the story.