Back when I was getting paid to cover sports for a living in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, the media landscape I lived in would be unrecognizable to our students today. No smartphones and a rudimentary version of the internet made it so that our audience depended on us to find out what happened at last night’s game. They waited until the newspaper hit their doorstep to get the score, the stats, and the key moments so they could keep up with their favorite teams.
It was my absolute favorite part of my job, and I’m happy to say that it is one of the relics of that bygone era that has survived the sports media digital revolution: Gamers survive and thrive on the web and social media.
This category of sports coverage is precisely what it sounds like: a reporter attends a game and then writes a story detailing what happened in said game … hence, “gamer.”
Without getting into exhaustive detail here about what goes into a gamer — because there are numerous online resources and textbooks that do that incredibly well — here are a few of the keys to writing a great one:
- Take detailed notes during the game, including stats and key moments
- Talk to coaches and athletes from both sides immediately after the game to get great quotes to add emotion to the storytelling
- Do NOT tell the story sequentially! Stack the story in order of importance: what is the first thing you would tell your best friend about this game? Whatever that is — whether it be a key play/moment, an aspect of the game that proved pivotal (the running game, the defense, turnovers, etc.), or an individual athlete who played a key role — put that first, and then go from there, in descending order of importance. Think old school inverted pyramid.
- Use plenty of stats. Sports fans love stats, so whenever you mention a key player, try to put a stat (in parentheses) after their name.
- Include a nice and balanced mix of the “Big Three” of game stories: play-by-play (highlighting key moments), stats, and quotes.
Game stories work best on your publication’s website, as they lose their timeliness very quickly. Resist the temptation to ever run them in your print publication, which probably only comes out once every 3-4 weeks, if that. No one wants to read about a game that happened that long ago. Set the goal of getting the story posted to your site within 48 hours, as that is usually the window during which people will still be talking about that game before they turn their attention to the next one.
The benefits of this type of coverage are that it makes the reader feel like they were there by highlighting those key moments of the game, and it also creates a running log of how a team’s season is going in real time. A side benefit of providing this type of coverage is the reporter on the scene will become so much more aware of potential story ideas about the team simply because they are so close to the action. Many of the story types you see below can stem from something observed or overheard while putting together a gamer, even an award-winning documentary that was a direct result of a reporter following a team throughout a season (https://vimeo.com/410687099?p=1t)
Here are a few sample gamers:
Football (including a photo album and a link to the livestream)
https://prospectornow.com/28949/sports/prospect-defeats-hersey-for-first-time-in-three-years/
Basketball (including a documentary about the season at the top and a link to the livestream)
https://prospectornow.com/22080/sports/knights-stun-bison-in-regional-championship/
Written By: Jason Block
