Thursday, June 25, 2009

Sports Reporting for Students like Me


Often times I have wondered about sports writers.  What inspires these journalists?  How do they gather ideas?  I mean a game is a game and yes, stuff happens, but is there really a story beyond that.  The answer...YES and thanks to Tom Blodgett of The Arizona Republic, I know how to instruct my students how to find them.

Several ideas Blodgett offered to cover in the sports section:
  • coaching changes
  • recruiting
  • awards
  • features
  • much, much more
He also cautioned about the ethical dilemmas that sports reporters/editors at high school newspaper face.  Upon listening to his presentation, I am happy to "blog" that I think I know how to accurately guide my students through sports reporting.

Marc Garcia
Sunset High School
Dallas, TX 

4 comments:

  1. Blodgett gave me some ideas, too, about reporting school sporting events. I like the Enterprise idea and the idea about profiling a student athlete who is not a star. At my school we have had some bad years with football. Our soccer team is great, but football rules win or lose.

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  3. Finding sport reporters and getting them to do the work has been a tough one for me. In addition to their normal school work load they have sports that takes up their time. In our school students play multiple sports. I have tried to get them to write from a participatory standpoint.

    Honestly, I see the main problem is trying to get students to do something when they do not want to and the know that electives do not count toward graduation.

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  4. Sports was the last thing on my mind when it came to the student publication, but after hearing Blodgett's lesson, I came out with a whole new attitude. It was great to see someone give us such a broad range of ideas and how to implement them in our classroom.

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