Sportswriting Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be
Why romanticized visions of sportswriting don't apply
May 14, 2009
It sounds like a great deal. Go to a game, get in for free, write about it and get paid for it. However, the reality is anything but fun.
Based on talking with many people who aspire to be sportswriters, some people go into sportswriting because they're huge sports fans. They may have grown up devouring the sports section, poring over box scores and arguing about statistics with their fellow fans. They may have fallen in love with the idea of writing about their biggest passion, and then decided to major in journalism as a result.
Other people who go into journalism cite it as a "calling." They feel an intense need to chase down facts and force politicians to answer questions about why they voted a certain way.
However, newspapers continue to hemorrhage staff and some newspapers, including The Rocky Mountain News, have shut their doors. Even those who get their foot in the door in journalism find that they don't get more than a pittance. The starting salary for a full-time reporter at a local weekly newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area is $18,000 per year for a full-time job. Other newspapers paid an average of $25,000 per year for full-time work.
Even though the salaries cover "full-time" employment, they're not 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs. Many sportswriters who post on a message board on the SportsJournalists.com Web site complain of long hours, travel to cover road games, and being away from their families for extended periods of time. Reporters also are on call at all times of the day as editors call with questions about their stories or reporters have to track down a player or a coach to get a quote.
In addition to the low salaries, many newspaper employees have begun dealing with furloughs. These require reporters to take days off without pay, stretching their already thin budgets. With newspapers continually losing money and advertising revenue, the number of pages sports editors have to devote to sports has decreased.
Thus, many have made sacrifices. The Washington Post no longer has a beat writer assigned to cover the Baltimore Orioles. They now use Associated Press wire service stories instead of having a reporter cover the Orioles. Other papers have eliminated beat coverage or only cover home games. Reporters who do drive to cover road games often have to fight to be reimbursed.
Most of those journalists who do make it to the press box to watch a game must observe an unwritten code that prohibits cheering for either of the teams they're covering. Journalists who break this rule are called homers and are frequently derided by other journalists on SportsJournalists.com for doing so.
Some reporters still consider journalism a calling. Some still love covering sports. But the reality is completely different from the perception.
