The Press Pass

THE PRESS PASS

April 19, 2018 Volume 1

SOCIAL MEDIA IN SPORTS: Good or Bad?

by Kyle Schroeder P. 1

The Men In The Box COVERING SPORTS MEDIA: CHAD FINN

What it’s like to cover colleagues work in sports crazed city

THE LIFE OF A FREELANCER: KEN POWTAK How a freelancer’s life is different than full time writer

Contents Issue 01 02 Letter From the Editor 03 Has Social Media been good or bad for sports coverage?

07 Super Bowl Media Night 08 The Life Of A Freelance Journalist: Ken Powtak 10 Q and A: Boston Globe’s Chad Finn 12 Top five qualites of a great sports columnist 14 Why ESPN’s Zach Lowe is the perfect Sports Columnist

Kyle Schroeder, Editor in Chief The content that is covered in sports magazines is exclusively the people that are involved directly with the sport. These people include players, coaches, front office employees, fans, etc. In a world in which sports has become bigger than ever, through the amount of ways you can consume it, the interests of sports fans have grown. Fans are now interested in not just the people involved, but the people who are covering the people who are involved. Sports media members aren’t just covering the celebrities any more, they have become celebrities themselves.

In the Press Pass, my goal is to give the readers an inside look into the jobs of sports media members, the important issues facing their industry, what is like being in the public spotlight, and analysis of some of what best sports writers and broadcasters do. With so much going on in the 24 hours news cycle we live in, the focus of sports magazines and sports media coverage in general, is mostly directed towards the people involved with sport. This magazine focus strictly on those that cover sports and the business as a whole from an unbiased perspective. In an era in which sports media members are widely known public figures, the crazed sports fans across the country deserve to learn more about these people. I am looking forward to providing you content that gives a unique perspective on media members as people and the business they are involved in.

Has Social Media Been Positive Or Negative For Sports Coverage?

By Kyle Schroeder The emergence of social media over the past seven years has changed so many things in how people live their lives. It has changed how people interact on a daily basis, how people spend their free time, and most importantly how people consume content and information. It has also changed the way the sports world is covered in so many different aspects. It has essentially become the engine that drives coverage of sports and it has added so many dynamics that people love and dynamics that people hate as well. The mixture of social media and sports is known to be a polarizing topic. So, it begs the question: Has social media been positive or negative for sports coverage?

Why Social Media is good for sports coverage: When we are talking about the relationship between social media and sports coverage, 90% of the time Twitter is the social media platform most involved in the conversation. Twitter has completely changed the way sports news is reported in that when news is broken, it happens first on Twitter. Joe Sullivan, the sports editor for the Boston Globe since 2004, appreciates what Twitter has brought to reporting sports stories.

“Twitter is a great source for news as that is now the first place where breaking news is posted,” said Sullivan.

“It has allowed fans to follow real time events as they happen without watching or listening. Say Tom Brady is talking to the media, there are reporters down there tweeting out quotes from his as he is talking.”

The instantaneous nature of Twitter has allowed fans to consume the news literally as soon as it happens.

Before Twitter, when a reporter would get a breaking news story, they would have to receive the news, relay it to a website editor, and then a quick story would have to be constructed. With that process, a lot of time goes between when the reporter hears the news to when the public learns about it. With Twitter, the reporter receives the news and then goes on their smartphone and sends a tweet out reporting the news. In today’s society, with people always using social media on their smart phone, thousands of people can receive breaking news within seconds of it happening. Fans are more informed about sports news today than they have ever been before. The beneficiaries of this Twitter news breaking phenomenon are top NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski and top NFL reporter Adam Schefter. Wojnarowski and Schefter have 2.2 million and 7.6 million people following them on Twitter respectively, so when one of them breaks a story it is instantly going on the Twitter feeds of millions of people.

This isn’t just for breaking news either, quotes from athletes and what is happening during a live game is seen through Twitter as well. As mentioned previously in Sullivan’s quote, you don’t have to watch or listen to a Tom Brady press conference anymore to hear what he has to say because multiple reporters are pulling quotes and tweeting them out in real time as he is talking. This applies to a live sporting event as well where a beat reporter for a team will be live-tweeting what is happening during the game. If someone has to miss a game for whatever reason, they can get a sense for what is happening just by reading the tweets of a beat reporter. That has also been taken a step further by the TV/internet centric media outlets as well, where during a live game they will tweet out a video clip of a notable play that just happened in the game. For example, the Red Sox and Yankees had a bench clearing brawl on April 11th. The video of it was tweeted out by several different outlets (ESPN, Bleacher Report, Barstool Sports, NESN, etc) within minutes of it happening. Now if fans have to miss a game for whatever reason, there are multiple outlets tweeting out videos of the notable events within the game as it happens.

In addition to the immediacy of it all, with Twitter keeping all of the sports media outlets under one umbrella, sports fans can get several different perspectives and more opinions than ever before.

“I’d say it’s definitely been positive when it comes to sports coverage since it allows a lot more ideas and interaction from both writers and fans at large,” said Boston Sports Journal Celtics writer Brian Robb. “Before it would just be a few stories and that’s it for coverage, but now info gets out quickly, it can be shared from more perspectives and there’s more of it due to social media”.

For example, news broke that Patriots receiver Brandin Cooks was traded to the Los Angeles Rams a month or so ago. Within the hour, several different media outlets posted links to articles reacting to the news. With that, fans can read many different perspectives on the trade and become very well informed on the details of the transaction and what the general thoughts of people are on it. This allows everyone’s opinion to be known and fans can be more well-rounded in their thinking with several different perspectives available to them.

Social media has also done wonders for the athletes themselves as it has allowed them to develop their own voices and connect with fans in a new way. “It gives the athletes an outlet to connect with fans and it allows the athletes to control their message on what they want public perception to be,” said Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy.

A great example of this is Tom Brady recently releasing a six-part documentary on Facebook called “Tom vs Time”. With the content coming straight from Brady and his team, it allowed fans to get a behind the scenes look of what goes on in Brady’s life. Without social media (a outlet that let the athlete controls the message), this documentary would have never been possible. Another example of this is fans can learn the true feelings and thoughts of a player. Whenever they post something on Twitter the words are coming directly from them and not through a media outlet. So, there is nothing that can be taken out of context when it is coming straight from the player.

Twitter has also proven to be a great tool to increase the traffic for articles on the website. “It allows you to get more eyes on your work,” said Boston Globe sports columnist Chad Finn. “When you tweet the story out and if someone with a bigger following re-tweets it, more people see the piece and the traffic that comes to your work gets bigger.”

Posting the links to stories on Twitter is something all of the sports media outlets have adjusted to. What this does is it doesn’t force the readers to manually go on the website to find the article. If the readers are a fan of the media outlet or writer, chances are they follow the outlet or writer on Twitter. That way when the outlet or writer tweets out the link to the article it shows up right on the reader’s twitter feed. Another piece of it is having the chance that a person with a bigger following retweets the post then the article reaches people it might have never gotten to if the person with a bigger following didn’t retweet it. Overall, it generates more traffic for the article and makes consuming content more convenient for the readers.

Why Social Media is bad for sports coverage: One of the main positives discussed is the fact that sports news is instantaneous. It was discovered that this can be a double-edged sword. It has created a culture within news reporting that being the first one to report something can sometimes trump journalistic integrity. “It has forced everyone in the reporting industry to be quick with things and it can lead to false reporting,” said Shaughnessy. “Just look at what happened with the Ron Borges situation.”

The Ron Borges situation Shaughnessy is referring to is when Borges, a Boston Herald football writer, got duped by someone pretending to be Tom Brady’s agent Don Yee, which lead him to write a false story. The person got a hold of Borges’ cell phone number and had a texting conversation with Borges saying how Brady will holdout of training camp if he didn’t get an increase in salary. Borges didn’t check another source, never tried to call the number that texted him and ran with the story. The Herald published the story and once news got out that it was fake, the Herald suspended Borges.

This is a case of a giant story being placed in the reporter’s lap, rushing to be the first one to put it out there and getting burned for it. Without social media and this culture of trying to be first, this situation with Borges doesn’t happen.

With people in sports media becoming public figures, people have a lot of opinions on them. Unfortunately with Twitter, people can make themselves anonymous and say negative and mean things without any repercussions. Not only do the media members have to deal with unwarranted hateful comments but it also takes away what could be thoughtful conversations.

“It is a bad place because anonymous people are given the power to say mean, hurtful things to people without any consequences for their actions,” said Sullivan. “I just wish people could be nicer on there so real discussion can take place instead of people throwing insults at each other”.

Shaughnessy had a similar thought process. “It empowers anonymous people who can hide behind a screen and say whatever they want to someone.” Shaughnessy said.

This problem hits a different level with women sports media members on social media. The anonymous nature of social media can make things really hard on women. Francesca Mariano, a video content producer for Barstool Sports, has experienced all of the difficulties when it comes to being a young woman in sports media.

“I have to stay away from Twitter and Instagram sometimes just for the good of my mental health,” said Mariano. “I know it can come with the territory of being on camera in front of male dominated audience, but it really sucks how crude and disrespectful some of these people can be. I guarantee if I saw one of these people in person none of them would say these things and social media allows them to hide behind a screen.”

While social media be tough for men, in the case of Mariano it shows that women can have it a lot tougher.

Overall, is it positive or negative?

When it comes to being a net positive or negative these are the responses from the five interviewees starting with Brian Robb.

“I think there are more than enough positives where they outweigh the negatives of social media,” said Robb.

“As much as I hate to say it, it has been a net positive for how it has advanced media giving people so many ways to consume content,” said Shaughnessy.

“Overall, it has been a good thing for the sports world but it can definitely be difficult for writers and reporters to deal with at times,” said Sullivan.

“I would say it is a net positive. The obnoxious people are annoying to deal with but there are ways to minimize them and enjoy the positives of social media,” said Finn.

“I hate that I have to deal with the crude and hurtful comments but there is also a lot of good people out there too that can make it a fun place and it is a great tool for promoting content,” said Mariano.

Based on the research and the comments of the interviewees, it is fair to conclude that while social media is far from a perfect place, but it has brought so much to sports coverage that the existence of it is a good thing.

Super Bowl Media Night

By Kyle Schroeder All season long, NFL players have media obligations they are required to fulfill during the week. For most players, all that means is they have to stand by their locker on certain days and answer questions from the local beat reporters. Some of the more well-known players will get behind a podium but other than that nothing else more significant happens. Until a team makes the Super Bowl.

Six days before the big game, the Super Bowl host stadium holds media night in which the entire team and coaching staff for both teams are available to speak to the media. 20 players along with the head coach are chosen to have podiums while the other players and coaches field questions standing on the playing surface. Each team spends an hour on the field.

What makes media night notable is it has an event like feel to it. There are hundreds of media members crowded in as compared to a press conference that may have a maximum of 20 people. In addition to the large amount of media members, a good chunk of those media members are not even football reporters. It is dubbed by real journalists as a “circus” where some people are dressed in funny costumes and ask obscure questions. In 2008, before the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl a woman in a wedding gown asked Tom Brady if she would marry him. In 2014, the Youtube stars from the channel “Dude Perfect” dressed in super hero costumes asked Patriots and Seahawks players what their favorite gas station snack is.

The title “Super Bowl Media Night” is a bit misleading as this night is probably the most useless for real media journalists. With the large amounts of people and many people not asking serious questions it is very difficult for the journalists to get the quotes they want. What many journalists have learned to do is go over to the less touted players and coaches where there are no crowds. That is the key to getting a good football answers. That aside, Super Bowl media night is for people to be entertained by goofy people asking goofy questions.

The life of a freelance journalist: Ken Powtak

By Kyle Schroeder There is nobody that represents what it is like to be a freelance sports journalist more than Ken Powtak.

Powtak has been freelancing for the Boston area sports teams since 1985. He got his start with United Press International when his friend, who was already there, asked him if he was interested Hartford Whaler games and Powtak took the opportunity.

“I would go to Hartford Whaler games with my friend and run quotes. He then asked if I would like to do Celtics and Red Sox games and I jumped at the chance to do that,” said Powtak. “After freelancing for the UPI a little bit, the Associated Press approached me about doing the Red Sox and Boston College games. I then got into the Celtics and Bruins with a little bit of Patriots and have been doing that ever since,” Powtak said.

The big difference between freelance sports writers and full-time sports writers is the fact that freelance writers have a much less structured schedule. The Associated Press has multiple freelancers writing for them, so they have created a set schedule for each week, distinguishing who covers what game. However, based on the time of the year and freelancers’ personal schedules, the schedule can change frequently.

“The AP with other freelancers on board created a system where we would all have set days. For them I do Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at Fenway park. Depending on how the other things work, I fill in the gaps with Bruins and Celtics games,” said Powtak. “There are times though where they would just call you up the night before or even the day of and ask you if you were available to cover a game,” Powtak said.

The other main difference between freelancers and full-time writers is the fact that freelancers are their own employees and can write for multiple outlets at the same time.

“I am an independent contractor for the AP where I am basically set up to do things for them at any time but that can end at any time as I am not their employee. I’ll get contacted from time to time by the Boston Herald or some other smaller outlets. I am on their list so whenever they need someone I am one of the people they will contact and ask if I am available to cover this or that game,” said Powtak Another interesting aspect of the freelance world is the fact that you can pick up other assignments just by networking with other people.

“I have also built up connections with people from other papers where I can fill in for those people when they can’t cover a game. I have a friend who writes for the Manchester union leader who will ask me to cover for him every once in a while,” Powtak said.

While freelance sports writing can be a fun job, one of the unrewarding things about being a freelance journalist today is the payment is not good enough for someone who has interest in raising a family. Powtak, as a family man with two kids, uses freelancing as his side job and runs his own business during the day.

“The industry has changed quite a bit in that regard as it doesn’t pay quite as much as it used to. A general freelancer to cover pro sports will make $100-175 per game story. We have to do the invoicing, they ask that you invoice at the beginning of the month and they pay 30 days later,” said Powtak. “The pay is not enough for me for it to be my only job, so I have a business that I run during the day as well.”

One of the other unique things about free-lancing is they will get asked to cover non-mainstream sports.

The writers, when given the assignment, are expected to gain a working knowledge of that sport enough to the point where they can write the game story. In Powtak’s case, he has been asked to cover tennis and figure skating. Before he covered Tennis for real, Powtak spent a match observing to get a feel for the experience.

“You watch the match to learn the ins and outs of the game and then listen to the questions being asked after the match so you know what to ask without sounding clumsy,” said Powtak.

When it came to a very unusual sport like ice skating, Powtak had to keep it as simple as possible while also telling the story at the same time.

“I had to keep it to the basics. I wrote what the scores she got were, how her performance worked, the reaction of the crowd, and I did not get into the nuances because a journalist acting like you know something that you don’t is a bad look,” Powtak said.

Chad Finn discusses his path to the Boston Globe and career as a columnist

By Kyle Schroeder Chad Finn currently has a job every aspiring sports writer in Boston wants. He has the creative freedom to write about all four major teams in any way he likes, while also taking a page out of the fan’s book by being a sports media critic. In this interview he talks about what has gotten to him to this point.

Q: How did you become interested in sports writing?

A: I Grew up in Maine and my dad would bring home the Herald and the Globe every day and by the time I was nine years old I got hooked on reading the sports section. I played basketball and baseball in high school and realized I wasn’t good enough to play beyond that so I thought about what I wanted to do and being a sports writer seemed like the best job in the world. Reading guys like Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons in the Globe all of those years gave me inspiration.

Q: What was your path to the globe?

A: I went Umaine and wrote for the student newspaper there and got some experience. After losing interest for a couple years, I became the sports editor of the student newspaper and one of those years the hockey team won the national championship. Out of that, I was able to get opportunities to write for a few other small places which lead to my first job in Concord, New Hampshire at the Concord Monitor. It is an excellent small newspaper that produced a lot of a great journalists. I worked there for nine years, won some awards for column and feature writing, and got hired by the Globe in 2003.

Q: What was your role when you first started at the Globe and how did you get to where you are now?

A: I initially worked as a page design guy with no writing. While I liked doing the design stuff for the Globe, I really missed writing. When the Red Sox won the world series in 2004, I was so mad that I didn’t have a place to write about it, so I started a blog on BlogSpot. What helped me writing the blog is my daughter was born in 2004, and I came home after work and would stay up a lot of the night to make sure my wife got sleep and could deal with the baby. So that was the time I would be writing the blogs. I would post around 3 days per week and it caught on a little bit to the point where Boston.com bought out my blog giving me an extra week pay to put the stuff on the site. That was awesome because I was doing it for fun and then I got paid to do it. 2009 I was still working at the desk doing design stuff and then the sports media market blew up. ESPN Boston started up and hired Mike Reiss away from us, WEEI made an effort to make a real website and hired guys like Paul Flannery and Rob Bradford, and NBC Sports Boston fired up its website and hired a bunch of people. Then our editors said that we need to beef things up a little bit and that’s when they hired Tony Massarotti away from the Herald and moved me full time to write for Boston.com. That was the big break I got where all of these other places were hiring, and the Globe needed to improve the website part.

Q: What is it like covering about sports media?

A: The column originated in the globe back in the 1970’s, Jack Craig was the first writer nationally to write a sports media column. Still today there are people that will say Jack Craig would have liked that column if I wrote something good but if I wrote something that someone thought was bad people would say, Jack Craig wouldn’t have done that. In Boston, sports media is like the fifth main sport now. The stuff does crazy traffic, you have two hugely successful sports radio stations, two TV networks, and two newspapers. So, there is a never a shortage of things to write about and people are really interested in it.

Q: What gave you the chance to be the sports media columnist?

A: I wrote a piece that caught the editors attention where I critiqued WEEI basically saying if they had the competition on the FM dial they would be in trouble. I did not know it at the time but three months later 98.5 the Sports Hub launched. It took only 3-6 months for the Sports Hub to surpass them in the ratings. A huge part of it was 98.5 the Sports Hub was on FM while WEEI was on AM. WEEI eventually switched over.

The people at WEEI obviously didn’t like it but my editors did, and it turned out to be 100% accurate for what would happen in the future. So that was the story that gave me the chance to write that column once per week.

Q: What research do you do for the media columns?

A: Talking to people is important and everyone is very gossipy about things, so it isn’t hard to get info. I get private messages from almost all of the personalities in Boston. Talking to the producers and the people in management is key as well. It is basically just general reporting. It has also changed the way I watch sports where I pay extra attention to what the broadcast is doing. Paying attention for anything notable to happen or a trend is key for finding a possible story.

The top five qualities of a great sports columnist

By Kyle Schroeder The world of sports journalism has grown to an astronomical degree where everyone and their brother has their own blog trying to make it big in the industry. With the amount of content there is to consume, it is hard for people to stand out from the pack. However, there are sports columnists out there who do stand out and they possess certain qualities that allow them to stand out. Without further ado, let’s get into the five best qualities of a great sports columnist.

1.Developed a network of people inside the sports industry The more connections a writer has to players, coaches, front office executives and other media members, the better the content is going to be. With connections to people inside the league and its teams, writers can land great interviews, get access to inside information that other writers don’t have, and develop knowledge from smart people within the sport. Having access to important people in the field gives writers the ability to enrich their content.

2. Have a strong passion for knowing about the ins and outs of the sport There are a lot of writers out there who watch games of just the well-known teams and design their articles just around that. The best columnists in sports are knee deep in their sports. They watch all of the teams in the league, learn all of the important statistics, and take time to re-watch games or film to deepen the core knowledge of what is going on. Having this deep knowledge shows the readers that the writer is someone you can take seriously when he gives his opinion on something. Building up this reputation will keep bringing readers back.

3. Have the ability to write elegantly without being too complex There is a sweet spot a sports columnist needs to hit when writing an article. There are some forms of writing that lends itself to very formal, elegant writing. Sports columns are intended to make points clearly.

With that, sports columnists need to get the best of both worlds where they write very well but make the points in the article clear and easy to understand.

4. Be innovative and not in a bad way Like the previous point, there is a sweet spot that needs to be hit with this one. In this 24/7 media cycle, it is crucial to have original ideas for columns that people haven’t thought about tackling yet. Having a new idea or angle about something in sports will get people interested into what is being written about and will make the writer stand out. However, a writer has to avoid going too far with this and not write something outlandish just to be innovative. Readers will see right through that and not respect the person as a writer.

5. Have a weekly calling card piece Having a specific type of column every week that you become known for is crucial in building and keeping an audience. A writer having that calling card piece will allow people to remember the writer and anticipate that article to come on a certain day. The big example, is Peter King’s Monday morning quarterback column in which he breaks down everything from the NFL Sunday. Without this specific column, King would not have notoriety that he has today.

ESPN’s Zach Lowe is everything you want in a Sports Columnist

By: Kyle Schroeder Zach Lowe started his sports journalism career the new age way. He along with Brian Robb (who is now writing for Boston Sports Journal) started a blog about the Boston Celtics called Celtics Hub. His work was noticed by Bill Simmons who hired Lowe to be the NBA writer for Grantland.com (a subordinate site to ESPN.com). Lowe became such a star with his work at Grantland to the point where ESPN hired Lowe as their senior NBA writer when Grantland was cancelled in 2015. So what makes Lowe this highly touted?It’s his versatility.

First off, he has an incredible depth of knowledge when it comes to the game of basketball and the NBA as a whole. He prides himself as someone who watches every team the league so when he writes his “10 things I like and dislike” column no team or player is off limits. When making his points in the column he uses X’s and O’s while also using advanced statistics. There are good sports writers who can do this but what separates Lowe is using video to explain the X’s and O’s. Even for the hardcore fans, the X’s and O’s are hard to understand but when Lowe shows a video of what he just explained it captures the attention and understanding of the readers. Here is an example of that from an article “They are smoking teams with Warrior-style “split actions,” usually involving Avery Bradley screening for someone on the wing while Drummond surveys. If Bradley senses his man cheating, he’ll abort the pick and zip to the rim:”. This a pretty hard concept to understand just by reading it but Lowe shows the video of it which makes it easy to undertand now that you have a visual of the play he described. Through this use of video and stats as the reader you feel like you’re learning something new every time you read his article.

The other aspect of his writing that is admirable is that he has fun with the piece he is writing. He does this by writing non-formally, making funny comparisons, and addressing fun, quirky NBA items. For example, he was discussing the evolution of Houston Rockets player Chris Paul. He talked about how Paul played in a structured system most of his career and now in Houston he gets to play with more freedom and is flourishing with the new-found freedom. Instead of just presenting the nuts and bolts talking about Paul, he made this fun comparison: “He’s like a sheltered college freshman being dragged to his first frat parties. ‘The beer is ... free? My parents wouldn’t like this. Maybe I’ll try one sip.’ Five minutes later, he’s doing keg stands.

Making a joke like this gives the article some personality and humor which definitely helps in drawing people in. In addition to cracking jokes, he will give a section in his columns to what NBA player secret handshakes he likes. It perfectly counterbalances the informative hardcore basketball talk he does the rest of the article.

In the sports writing world, there are a lot of people who write non-serious articles strictly to entertain and humor people. There are also a lot of people who are writers to inform and give serious basketball opinions.

Lowe combining the two together has made himself one of the more successful sports writers in today’s world.