So You Want to Be a Sports Journalist
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by user Ron Sen, MD
You long for the limelight of the jock sniffers, to rub shoulders with multibillionaire owners, and to travel to exotic places (like Milwaukee) to cover your favorite sports (soccer?). Do you have the write stuff?
You might start off with the highbrow approach attending the name brand journalism schools, like Columbia. But if you sup with the elite, can you move down with the knuckle draggers?
No, the pathway to the stars must start with the Calaveras County Little League, or whatever. Learn to use active voice, limit your scribblings to the audience reading at the sixth grade level, and absolutely do not misspell Joaquim Poritzkowiecz's name. Because if you do, you will never write in this town again.
Fast forward to some established 'rag', imagine the Washington Times. After devoting your health (carpal tunnel's a bitch, man), you get to cover the Washington Nationals, Caps, or maybe even the Bullets, er Wizards. Fuggedaboutit, you ain't covering the 'Skins, not in a city where the children sing "Hail to the Redskins" daily, with the Pledge of Allegiance an afterthought.
Admit it, you can't name five players on the Nationals, anybody except Gilbert Arenas on the Bul-Wizards, and anybody on the Caps. And now you're responsible for covering the team.
First, you set up your rules - try to be positive, try not to badmouth the officials, and omit anything you see or hear about players doing that their mothers don't want in the Metro Section. Steroids, alcohol, drugs, "extracurricular" stories all out the window. Next, you choose your favorite themes (why the team succeeds/struggles, why management deserves more time - pass the Grey Poupon, and why a new stadium benefits everyone - with a press pass). Finally, you get down to business (italics added in lieu of bubbles over the head).
The Washington Nationals send slugging ( a little hyperbole is good for the soul) first baseman [[ Dmitri Young]] San Francisco as their All-Star representative ( was Body Mass Index a criteria?). Young, carrying a hefty ( subtle weight reference) .335 batting average into the Classic, has an .881 OPS leading the Nationals ( and good for sixth among NL first basemen behind Fielder, Pujols, Howard, Lee, and Helton).
Well, you get the point. You create ( spin) reality for your readers ( let's not get too excited here) to enhance their enjoyment and understanding ( twenty percent of Americans can't identify north from south on a map - urban legend?) of America's favorite pastime ( as long as you don't count football, NASCAR, Netflix, and so on).
Well, anyway, you didn't split any infinitives, the whole city is full of BS, and the Nationals put on a pretty good media spread...
