Tansits Week 4

The new age of Internet driven news and communication has undoubtedly changed our future in terms of gathering news. The two articles for this week written by Dave Kindred and Malcolm Moran highlight this fact in terms of sports beat reporting.

            As Kindred points out early on in his article sports beat reporting has become revolutionary, with changes seeming to pop up overnight. The world of a beat reporter is non-stop production from the beginning of his or her shift until the end of it. Kindred uses Yankees’ beat reporter Wally Matthews to show how quickly the changes occur and how deep their impact is. Prior to writing for the Yankees, Matthews covered boxing and was a long time sports writer. Now though, Wallace has become engulfed in the fast-paced world of beat reporting where he constantly is updating via tweets and a blog – quite literally non-stop. This example leads to one of Kindred’s main points that this type of work runs writers into the ground. A day where reporters are updating before, during and after games on top of producing stories is a grueling process, and as Kindred points out it can burn out any reporter. Along with this point, Kindred adds that this fast pace beat reporting is “thorough with little regard to context, perspective and narrative”. Matthews sums Kindred’s piece up very well by saying that “It’s crazy, but it’s the world we’re in.”

            Moran’s piece compliments Kindred’s points by starting off saying that sports beat reporting has become more about producing fragments than shining light on central issues. Moran says that piece by piece reporting to keep everything up to date by the second removes a safety net journalists have had fin the years prior: time. Instead of checking sources and information for a few hours in the day, sports beat reports are forced to do this in mere minutes. Moran adds that there are two main deficiencies among today’s beat reporters: a lack of discernment and a reluctance to engage.

            Both writers essentially say that sports beat reporting has transformed into an extremely fast paced environment that isn’t necessarily a good thing. But nonetheless it sells, and fans want what they want when they want it – especially with news about their team. Personally I’m not sure if this fast paced style is good for journalism. False reports can ruin the credibility of any writer, and sports fans aren’t always as forgiving as the general public. Either way though, as Wally Matthews said it, it’s the world we live in.