THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

When I was a teenaged boy, in the 1970s, I too wanted to be a sportswriter. However, once I left home for university, I decided I didn’t want to be a sportswriter. I still wanted work in publishing, but not as a sportswriter.

I don’t think I actually knew at the time, but some sixth sense warned me that one would have to conceal lots of interesting stuff because otherwise there would be a loss of access to sources. Such self-censorship was not appealing.

A friend of mine did become a sports journalist, although not a reporter. He knows a lot more than he can let on, and consequently is a very boring person to talk to.

It seems to me that this is an argument for a change in how sports are covered. Papers could save money and still serve their readers with pool coverage for recaps and postgame quotes and such, and their “beat” reporters should be blogger/columnists. Let them become experts on the team and take on a columnist’s perspective with a columnist’s standards, with the expectation that they’ll still wear a journalist’s hat at all times, ready to break news when they find it.

Reduce the admin and pay the specialists for specialized work.