News writing style is just as important for sports reporting as it is for general news, business stories or any other journalistic work.
The advantage of sports writing is that you are allowed a little it more leeway in your choice of words. In crime or business writing, you are restricted in your use of adjectives and adverbs and are encouraged to focus more on nouns and verbs.
Sports writing, however, allows you to go to town in describing plays, the atmosphere, fans and other colorful aspects of a sporting event.
For this article, we will go through, step by step, how to write a straightforward sports report using quotes.
Ideally, any sports story would have quotes from the winners and losers. Indeed, many sports articles are written around what athletes say rather than what they have achieved on the field of play.
However, you also have sports articles written without quotes. When rookies learn how to write like a journalist, especially in sport, they are likely to come across the structure that we will show you here.
We will adapt the NBA game between Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers on April 1 as our example article.
1. Intro - the most important news aspect of a sports game is the score. Who won? How did they win and what effect did the victory have? Also important is whether we are writing from a Boston perspective or Cleveland. In this case, we will go with Cleveland.
"Cleveland Cavaliers lost 98-96 to the Boston Celtics after Delonte West's sank two free throws in the final seconds, dropping three and a half games behind the Pistons for the best record in the Eastern Conference."
2. More info - The above is enough for those who have a passing interest in the sport. However, NBA fans would want more information and you could give it to them in one or two paragraphs.
"The Cavaliers were without star player LeBron James, suffering from a knee injury, while the Celtics were minus Paul Pierce. Gerald Green led the way for Celtics with 25 points while Kendrick Perkins had 12 points and nine rebounds.
The Cavaliers, for whom Larry Hughes scored 24 with Sasha Pavlovic scoring 17, have already qualified for the play-offs while Boston are out of the running."
3. Quote - This is where you can provide a quote from the coach or a key player from both teams. You can precede each saying with a lead-in paragraph or go straight into the quote.
"Celtic forward Al Jefferson, said: 'They were missing their best player and we were missing our best play. We just stuck in there.'
Cavs coach Mike Brown said James' absence was a key factor in their loss.
'We miss LeBron. We miss LeBron every time he doesn't play. He's our guy,' said Brown."
4. The rest - Once you got the main information and key quotes out of the way, you can go on to describe the game. Even better would be to describe just one or two plays and include more quotes.
The thinking behind sports articles is that people would have watched the game on TV anyway and would not want boring game description. Therefore, quotes from the people who matter, such as athletes and coaches, would offer better reading value.
There are many types of sports news writing that is offered around the world everyday. We have merely showed you its simplest form. Certainly, it is a rewarding form of news writing for journalists who love their sport. And the structure they use allow them to adapt their skills to any type of journalism writing.
Grapevine has it that the paper boy may soon be out of business with the emergence of news blogs on the internet. Conventionally, most home owners, especially those belonging to the older generation are used to reading the daily newspaper in print in order to stay updated with current global news. However, this trend is experiencing a change where the newer generation now looks to the internet when it comes to staying updated with the latest happenings around the world.
This shifting trend poses a threat to many of the conventional print newspapers. So much so that limo many of them have initiated the move to go online. Many newspaper companies have experienced a drop in their sales due to this new emerging trend. However, the danger for news agencies is far from over because they are being rivaled by another creation of the web that comes in the form of news blogs.
These are basically online websites that deliver round the clock updated breaking news from around the world. These news aggregation websites do not only give you the daily news as quoted from other news sources but they also give you the opportunity to watch original news programs covering your favorite niches. Many of these blogs feature separate sections, writers, videos and original programs on politics, business, sports, entertainment, biz and tech and much more. In essence a news blog is everything that a newspaper could ever wish to be.
There is no denying the fact that news blogs offer the news seeker a much more enhanced experience. At the same time however it has had a significant impact on journalism. This is because readers are given the opportunity to comment and give feedback on anything they read, see or hear on these blogs thus keeping the journalists in check. Unlike conventional media where it is difficult to identify a twisted agenda, with news blogs intentions are always kept in check.
When examined in detailed this phenomenon comes across as a very important and vital development of our century. In an era where the media is being blamed for promoting vested agendas, news blogs deliver impartial breaking news and headlines from around the world in an unbiased, unprejudiced and informative manner.
The newspaper in print can never even dream to match the value that news blogs have to offer. This is why you will find them to be increasing in terms of popularity all over the world whereas the sales and popularity of the conventional printed paper seem to be dwindling fast.