2008 Essay Question:
What is the future of sportswriting in the age of the Internet? What role will bloggers and sites such as YouTube play? How does the editorial sensibility of the Internet differ from that of traditional sportswriting? What do future writers have to learn in order to succeed in a new medium?
Kyle Austin
Syracuse University
“The press pass must be stretched farther than ever, and provide content both for a print version and the Web. The morning sports section might not be as relevant as it used to be. But that doesn’t mean the sportswriter can’t be.”
Kyle Goon
University of Maryland
“Future journalists will still have to go to games and cover their beats because someone needs to do it. The scary part for traditional media is they’ll have to continue to find ways to make themselves relevant to fans.”
Ryan Haney
Trinity College-Hartford
“The great sportswriters of the future will get by just as the great sportswriters of the past did: good writing and a love of the game.”
Alex Herbach
University of Southern California
“Nowadays, a sportswriters’ influence—besides how often he or she is right—lies in the wattage of their words. Their popularity is based on how loud or bombastic the language is, not on their depth of coverage.”
Bill Oram
University of Montana
“ … readers will still turn to the masters of sports reporting—the Murrays and the Cannons—if they want real poetry. A key to not getting left behind … means becoming a multifaceted reporter––learn to take photographs, to shoot video and work an audio recorder––but never neglecting what gives sports reporting its grace, the printed word.”
Michael Sanserino
Indiana University
“The good thing about the Internet, for all its faults, is that it has infinite space, and future sportswriters shouldn’t be afraid to use some … to challenge readers and break out of the current news cycle.”
Mark Viera
Penn State University
“Opinions abound for couch-slouching bloggers across the country. These people, often writing under a veil of anonymity, have no accountability — they are not in the locker rooms or sitting on press row or speaking with sources … reporters need to stay true to the their craft, gathering the best obtainable version of the truth.”