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Anniversary Reunion

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Beyond Winning and Losing: The Other Stories of Sports Journalism

Do Newspapers Matter?

The End of Broadcast News as We Know It?

Reporting Science in Turbulent Times

Beyond Winning and Losing: The Other Stories of Sports Journalism

By Greg Chalfin

The Emory University tenth anniversary journalism reunion kicked off with a panel discussion focused on sports news coverage beyond the game.

For more than an hour, four panelists and moderator Gary Pomerantz, a former Emory journalism professor and sports writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, offered their takes on the evolving role of sports journalists.

Pomerantz said that sports departments are often looked upon at newspapers as the "toy department." But he said that description is inaccurate.

"In journalism, sports are not only the department filled with toys," Pomerantz said. "Sometimes – in fact often – you get the real world creeping into the toy box in very profound ways. It’s about much more than games."

Issues of race, steroids, drugs and crime dot the landscape of the sports section, and sports journalists must have the skills to cover a wide variety of stories off the field.

"If we really are [at ESPN] the worldwide leader in sports, then we have to cover the entire picture of sports," said Journalism Program graduate Scott Shapiro, who currently produces ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike in the Morning. "A lot of times that includes off the field issues as well."

Pomerantz asked the panel why some of those stories, like the BALCO steroid investigation involving major league baseball, have not garnered sustained national attention.

"A lot of people watch sports to get away," said Journalism graduate Jenn Hildreth, who is now an anchor for Fox Sports Net South. "You want to go and you want to sit down, sit on your couch and watch that game. And you don’t want to hear about guys juicing up."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jeff Schultz offered a different explanation. When Schultz started at the AJC almost 20 years ago, he said that sports departments had the manpower and resources to devote time and energy to investigate national projects.

That is no longer the case. What drives sports journalism today is something entirely different than a generation ago.

"Opinions, right now, that’s what sells," Shapiro said. "ESPN trains all its analysts to speak in soundbites."

But Schultz said that may not be progressive for the field.

"Some of [the shows] are just way overboard, and it’s just evolved into four guys screaming at each other," Schultz said.

To combat the trend of sports journalism driven by soundbites, Schultz advised young journalists to do thorough reporting.

"The way you should grab people’s attention is by getting information and anecdotes about somebody that no one else has," Schultz said. "That’s what makes a story, not what words you use."

Deciding which stories are told is an entirely different matter for sports journalists. Hildreth said that sometimes, networks have to think about which college or professional sports leagues are their partners before running with a story. That can put significant restraints on journalists in the field.

"Ratings drive you, and you’ve got to consider who you’re working with," Hildreth said.

The constantly changing question for sports journalism is whether its role is more as a news medium or one closer to entertainment.

"I think there needs to be that balance between writing for the fans and also telling the stories that have to be told because we’re journalists, and we’re journalists first," Journalism graduate Lindsay Jones . Jones now works as a sports writer at The Palm Beach Post.

Beyond the games, many stories must be told, and Schultz said that’s what he enjoys most. He said the story he’s most proud of involved a piece about people in from the former East Germany in the German athletic structure who lost their jobs after reunification.

"That was fun because it’s something different," Schultz said.

It’s an example of a story beyond the game that needed to be told.

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Do Newspapers Matter?

By Chris Megerian

Despite much hand-wringing over the perceived decline of newspapers, a panel of professional journalists said the end is nowhere in sight.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Claude Sitton, an Emory Journalism graduate and former editor of The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., said newspapers are the best medium for in-depth coverage that is essential to a democracy.

"TV has about the depth and attention span of a grasshopper," he said.

Former president and chief executive of Branham Newspaper Sales Donald Waddington said people have been prophesizing the end of the newspaper for decades.

"We've seen just about all the things that happen today," said the Emory Journalism alumnus. "I think people are going to be reading newspapers for awhile."

But that doesn't mean newspapers haven't had a tougher time in today's digital environment.

"We're not losing money in this business, we're just not making as much," Waddington said.

Some large metropolitan newspapers like The Chicago Tribune or The Washington Post have begun free newsletters that are quicker to read and easier to hold. Newspapers around the world have decreased their size or shifted to a tabloid format.

Waddington said newspapers should make a greater effort to utilize online resources to adapt to a faster, computerized society.

Isabel Wilkerson, a New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and the James M. Cox, Jr. Professor of Journalism, agreed.

"It's been decades since newspapers were the first to tell you what happened," she said.

Wilkerson said a focus on the why and how of a story, as well as the use of narrative journalism, can keep newspapers relevant.

"Storytelling itself is as old as fire," she said.

Electronic media instructor Lee Clontz said newspapers are an "incredibly powerful" record of history, but they have become unwieldy and wasteful.

"It's hard for me to believe this is going to be the primary mode of information distribution," he said.

A dangerous statement to make on a panel filled with old-time newspaper people. Sitton interjected, joking, "Should we shoot him now or later?"

Blogs have been heralded by some as the new foil to mainstream media, but panelists said blogs don't have the power to bring down newspapers.

"Mainstream media will always have the big money," Clontz said.

Wilkerson said that "blogs are an amazing expression of the First Amendment," but they lack a fundamental component of journalism — reporting.

The strength of the blog lies in its specialization, Clontz said. Although everyone, regardless of their interests, gets the same newspaper, people can pick and choose what they want to read on blogs.

Panelists agreed that the most important thing about newspapers was not the format, but the quality of the journalism they showcase. As long as people are still taught the same "essential skills" of journalism, Wilkerson said, it is not important which medium is used.

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The End of Broadcast News as We Know It?

By Rishi Chhatwal

Is it time to write the obituary of traditional broadcast news? That question was a hot topic during the Journalism Program tenth anniversary reunion.

A panel led by CNN Senior Producer Henry Schuster and Atlanta Business Chronicle Broadcast Editor Crystal Edmonson discussed the obituary of broadcast news. The panel covered a wide range of broadcast issues from the decline and rebirth of radio to international news coverage today.

Schuster said the question of whether new media will overtake old media is constantly asked. He said that previous focus was on television overtaking radio news.

"Now, it’s ‘will the Internet overtake [TV] broadcast news', and cable is included in that," he said.

Schuster said broadcast continues to change, not die out, and journalists have to keep up.
"What’s important is, what do we as journalists do to adapt to that change, and how does that change affect all of us?" he said.

Schuster said technology is helping journalists keep pace, citing his backpack loaded with a laptop, camera and satellite phone as evidence of the new portability of news coverage tools.
Panelist Michael McDougald, owner of several Georgia radio stations, scoffed at the notion of the death of broadcasting.

"I’ve been to radio’s funeral so many times," he joked.

McDougald said radio has always found a way to bounce back. Music company monopolies lead to the creation of a radio-owned record label, Broadcast Music, Inc. The Associated Press at one point denied radio station access to news, which led to the creation of another wire service called United Press International, he said. And, he said, television tried to take over, but it didn’t.

McDougald thinks corporations will start to sell many local radio stations to individuals.
"They will localize them, get rid of programmers out in California and they will bring radio back to the community, locally," he said. "What’s going to make us good is our roots."

Schuster also talked about the obituary of international news coverage. He asked panelist Jeremy Young, a producer for Al Jazeera International, how he felt about the state of international news coverage by broadcast.

Young said that companies are starting to run news departments and decide agendas.
"It is a business world, and news networks are a business," he said. "International news coverage, especially through nightly news and major broadcast networks, has not covered the world as comprehensively."

But, Young said, Americans have not lost an international focus. He cited statistics that more Americans are studying abroad than ever before.

"I refuse to believe that Americans are not interested in foreign news," Young said.
Former dean of the Medill School of Journalism and a former professor in Emory’s Journalism Program Loren Ghiglione rounded out the panel, saying that broadcast news is here to stay.
"I hold out great hope that broadcast, including TV, will continue to be an important news media," he said. "We are going to continue to rely on broadcast news."

The panel provided insight into today’s ever-changing world of broadcast news. Journalism student Marissa Mitchell, who is interested in pursuing a career in broadcast, said the panel provided a full scope of broadcast journalists.

"It was a great idea to have local, national and international broadcast reporters on the panel," she said.

Mitchell added that the panelists’ predictions about the changes coming in broadcast news did not alter her career plans.

"I think it all boils down to your passion. I am passionate about covering news," she said.

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Reporting Science in Turbulent Times

By Supriya Kotagal

Veteran reporters and others just beginning their careers agreed on one point during the panel on "Reporting Science in Turbulent Times": being a science journalist requires a good deal of patience.

"Having to interview doctors is sometimes like having a colonoscopy and a root canal at the same time," joked Randy Martin, Emory cardiologist and health reporter for WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta. Four others joined Martin, the panel’s moderator, in sharing the ins and outs of reporting in a field often politically charged and scientifically complex.

Panelist Carrie Gann, who graduated from the Journalism Program in 2006 and has worked as a science and medical intern for The Sunday Paper, said a challenge reporters face is making science consumable for a broad audience. "The danger, of course, is knowing too much about science and forgetting what the average person can understand," Gann said. "It’s our job to allow people to understand science."

In the process, it’s easy get caught in the trap of oversimplifying and even overhyping an issue, said Nancy Albritton, editor of the medicine/environment/science desk at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She makes a conscious effort to ensure that controversial science topics published in her section, like the global flu pandemic, are not given too much or too little play. "I am not in the business to scare people," she said.

Albritton also said she encourages reporters to never take studies or theories at face value. "There is no black and white," she said. "Don’t be afraid to go to the other side of the issue."

But being well balanced, informative and concise at the same time is a challenge easier said than done, said Rhonda Rowland, former senior medical correspondent for CNN. She spoke to the challenge of condensing big medical pieces down to two-minute TV segments or 30 second radio spots. "Words and pictures are very powerful tools but with the limits we do have on time, how do we present the facts accurately?" Rowland asked the audience.

Distancing herself from her own personal biases is yet another challenge of being a science reporter, Rowland said. Though the field is rife with emotionally charged topics ranging from stem-cell research to the new abortion pill, a journalist’s sole responsibility is to stick to the research. "Knowing the facts and knowing the big picture can help us from being a part of the controversy," Rowland said.

Whether it’s putting a decimal point for a figure in the right place or second-guessing potentially biased research, Michael Coren, 2002 graduate of the Journalism program, said science reporters must always be vigilant as they face complex research, partisanship, and resistance to share data. "To be a science writer, you must look at both sides and be an investigative reporter," said Coren, former managing editor of the Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia.

Though the next generation of science reporters will have these and other challenges to face in the field, Martin said he hoped the panel’s candidness was helpful. "Journalism is a great career," he said. "You've got to be accurate. You've got to be fair. But most of all, you've got to have a passion for excellence."

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