| QUINCY & SPORTS JOURNALISM 101 |
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| by Mike Fisher | Mon, May 21, 2007, 02:05 PM |
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I don’t want to use the sad tale of Quincy Carter as a life lesson. Instead, how about if we use it as a Journalism 101 lesson? And rather than skewering the unfortunate former Cowboys QB, how about we skewer the state of local newspaper sportswriting?
At the risk of seeming to suffer from Bob Sturm’s “Good Old Days Syndrome,’’ allow me to demonstrate to you the way DFW newspaper journalism used to operate vs. the way DFW newspaper journalism operates today. The way we crusty old fogies used to do it is still alive. I’ll leave myself out of the conversation here and drive you to the Dallas Observer, where my long-time colleague Richie Whitt speaks loudly and carries a big alternative stick. A couple of weeks ago, Whitt did a feature column on ex-Cowboy QB Carter. Read it here. And you’ll see that Whitt a) actually traveled to Bossier-Shreveport, b) actually attended an Arena2 BattleWings game, c) actually interviewed Carter, d) actually spoke to his friends, e) actually unearthed new details, and to top it off, f) wrote in an edgy and funny style that has at least certainly upset the sensitive folks from Bossier-Shreveport. Now go read this. It’s a two-weeks-later similarly themed piece by The Dallas Morning News. Except, the major-metropolitan daily columnist’s article on Quincy a) might as well have been typed by the author from his own living room, b) does not include the insight from having actually watched a BattleWings game, c) has no interview or quotes from Carter, d) has no interviews or quotes or insight from anybody, e) offers nothing even close to worth 50 cents to the reader, and to top it off, f) features so little creativity, insight, depth, humor or cleverness that it might as well have been written in crayon. I’m not picking on the big-paper author. I’m really not. It’s conceivable he’s doing his best. (I find it odd that starting in the second paragraph of his column he takes pains to report that he’s “shared a few meals’’ and “talked often’’ with Quincy but that the reader cannot benefit from the insight gleaned from the eating and the talking, but, whatever.) Nevertheless, back in the Paleolitic Era when I was a big-paper scribe (sorry, Sturm’s disease again) the entire notion of writing a piece like this REQUIRED you to at least INTERVIEW the subject. And then actually writing well, that was always sort of a requirement, too. Certain things – turning a phrase, interviewing a controversial subject, revealing a truth unknown to anyone – those were the reasons kids dreamed of being writers. It’s why DallasBlog exists. Why DallasBasketball.com exists. Why FrontBurner exists. Why Ed Bark has a home. And why The Observer is more than just a place to find good prices on great condoms. Happily, there are a few tiny pockets of sports-related writing in DFW where the dream isn’t as dead as big-paper subscription-renewal numbers.
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Comments (3)
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written by Billy , May 21, 2007 Let's face it, the DMN's laziness is not confined to the Sports page, they get the facts wrong a lot, usually pig back off of other's work, and rarely do their own investigative reporting. They are strictly bush league and their reporters are lazy, no doubt being the result of having a monopoly in the area on print. The DMN mails it in on a regular basis and it shows.
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written by Ed Cognoski , May 22, 2007 I won't dispute any of the criticism of the DMN, but, in fairness, it ought to be pointed out that this Mike Fisher Dallas Blog column suffers from the same faults as the Jean-Jacques Taylor column. Write comment
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