1. JOU 3304
Sports Writing
Professor Michael Rizzo
Director, Journalism Program
Division of Mass Communication
Collins College of Professional Studies
September 10, 2020
6. It’s time to write about the game.
What do you need to prepare?
Roster
Injury list
Team preps – how have they been? What’s
changed from last season? How are the
game circumstances different?
7.
8. More game writing characteristics:
Provide football expertise:
You need to know it and communicate it. Don’t
just tell something football (a play call, a
defensive alignment, a strategy) explain it.
Because YOU SHOULD KNOW why it’s important
also analyze how it
made a difference to the reader.
9. Provide detailed reporting:
Keep your own statistics and notes. It’s work but
they are yours. Compare them to the official NFL
stats posted online.
Use your notetaking to add to your understanding
of the game and use them to highlight the key
aspects of the game (big play, turning points,
who’s hot and who’s not, reactions and facial
expressions).
Notetaking helps you write your story quicker and
makes it much more insightful because you’ve
already written it down.
10. Think of conceptual story structure:
Most game stories are summary leads in inverted
pyramid style. But there are other ways to report
the game result. [Think BIG MOMENT]
Perhaps it’s “mistake = loss” or “unusual effort =
win.” It could be other concepts too. Whatever
you choose, explain what those items were in the
game and how they impacted the result.
Readers want MORE THAN JUST YOUR PLAY-BY-
PLAY of the game (they probably already saw it).
Give them an organized, interesting, coherent
review of the concept you deem most important
Adapted from Sportswriting: The Lively Game by Conrad Fink, 2001, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
11. Game summaries
Apply snappy writing - action verbs but not
clichés.
Keep the story relatively short – 250-300 words
should work – you are just reporting the result.
Find the key(s) of the game and focus on them.
Give some context when appropriate [remember
how the reporter wrote the Raiders-Browns game
story about what was done to Kiffin in the
Broncos game]
Offer look-ahead aspects not just for the next
game but for players or the coach
Adapted from Sportswriting: The Lively Game by Conrad Fink, 2001, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
12. Assignment for Thursday Sept. 10, 2020
This is on BlackBoard.
Write a 200 word game summary of THE FIRST
HALF ONLY of the Sept. 10, 2020 Chiefs-Texans
game. Submit your story in BlackBoard.
The deadline to submit your story is 10:30 p.m.
on Sept. 10, 2020 (Game starts at 8:20 p.m. ET
so the first half should end by 9:45 p.m.).
More on next page.
13. Assignment for Friday Sept. 11, 2020
This is on BlackBoard.
On Sept. 11, 2020, submit an analysis story
by 12 noon on Friday September 11, 2020
on the entire game.
Submit your analysis story on our course’s WIX
website. The link is below:
https://sjujournalism.wixsite.com/jou3304
