Ah, the life of a newspaper sportswriter.
Plant your feet high on the desk, watch a game on the tube, then scribble a few lines for the next days edition.
Or, go out to the ballpark, hoot and holler with the crowd, wolf down a few hot dogs, call the office with the winning score and head home.
Uh, now that the Journals sports staff is chasing after me with baseball bats, golf clubs and tennis racquets, Id better reveal the real scoop about sportswriters.
Forget the fantasy job of those first few sentences, forget anything youve imagined about the job, and meet Kim Gaffney.
Shes one of nine people who work for the Sports section of the Journal. Some of them report and write about sports teams, games, competitions and issues that affect sports, some of them edit stories, write headlines and lay out pages of the section. Some write and edit.
Kim is a reporter and writer. That means she spends most of her time on the road or on the telephone keeping up with teams shes assigned to cover.
In a nutshell, sportswriters pretty much tell readers four things:
- What happened in the latest game or competition.
- Whats up next.
- What it all means, and what are the other issues affecting certain sports, or many sports.
- Who the coaches and players are, what theyre thinking about, dreaming about or agonizing over.
Newspaper writers like Kim cover a number of teams and sports. She is one of several Journal writers who share the task of covering local high school and local college sports.
She has also written about issues that affect many teams. Earlier this year, she wrote stories for a special package about athletic trainers, and in May, she wrote about whether local colleges were following gender equity rules, which require comparable opportunities for male and female athletes.
The gender equity stories can be found on the Journals Web site:www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/projects/sports_equity/story1.shtml.
Kim mostly works nights. She works weekends. When everybody else is at a game enjoying the event, shes there working to get information for a story for the next days newspaper. The schedule can be grueling, she said, but she loves the job.
When I wake up in the morning, my biggest worry is who won a basketball game, she said.
Kim grew up in Rhinebeck and was an athlete there. A spinal injury when she was in eighth grade made walking almost impossible for a few months, but she recovered and went back to playing sports. At North Carolina State University in Raleigh, she decided to combine her two favorite pastimes writing and sports. And she got plenty of practice as a writer and sports editor for the campus newspaper.
Spring is a busy time for sportswriters and her recent schedule confirms that. Last month, she went to California to cover the Marist College baseball team and how it fared in two games in the NCAA tournament. Marist lost two games and won another.
She said technology turned out to be one of the most interesting parts of that long-distance assignment.
She sent her stories from a computer in her hotel room. But the time difference between the coasts made it impossible to get some results into the printed edition of the Journal. A game ended at 11 p.m. Pacific time, but that was 2 a.m. here, and the Journal was already being printed.
Results posted on Web
So the game results were put on the Journals Web site for the Marist fans who didnt want to wait until morning. The Web site also carried a 24-hour diary on the teams experience at the tournament, something their fans and families could follow wherever they were.
Once back home, Kim geared up for high school championships in track and field, and softball.
She said one of the hardest parts of covering local high school sports is that people may think the reporter is there to cover an individual athlete, and even be a promoter of that athlete. But the reporter is there to cover the team as a whole, and as a non-partisan observer.
Kim kept an informal diary for a few days recently, prior to the Marist trip to California. It shows the mix of tasks required for sportswriters, and the mix of sporting events they cover:
Tuesday: Took results over the phone about high school and college sporting events that happened that night for publication in the next days paper. Worked on a special package of stories about how the four-year colleges in Dutchess and Ulster counties are doing in terms of complying with the Title IX regulations that require gender equity in school sports.
Wednesday: Covered the Triangulars, a high school crew event that includes all five local teams. Returned to the office and followed up on results from that event by telephone.
Took telephone calls about other sports events that night for the next days newspaper.
Thursday: Went to Marist College to cover the NCAA Selection show. The Marist team had qualified for the NCAA tournament and the team members were waiting to find out where and who they would be playing. A live Web cast was shown at Marist for team members and coaches to watch. Prior to the show, coach Tim Smith was interviewed for a feature story.
Kim said that anybody considering a career in sportswriting should get good, solid experience covering sports on a local level if they eventually want to cover major league sports.
Dont expect to start out covering the Yankees. And seek out good advice, early and often, she said.
As her schedule and that of every Journal sportswriter shows, the idea of putting their feet up on the desk and watching a game just for fun is pure fantasy.
