Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about languages and translation, and no, I’m not talking about a problem Google Translate might solve.
I mean the problem of jargon. It’s endemic to local daily news organizations, who tend to write for everyone “in the know.”
It’s not just sports departments. Science, education, health, even restaurant and food — all of these topic areas tend to be written using the assumption that the only people who read those articles are already interested and already knowledgeable. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.
But this bacteria seems to thrive in the closed environment of sports.
The following is the second paragraph taken from some volleyball coverage at The Daily Pilot, in beautiful Fountain Valley, California:
“The No. 3-seeded and No. 3-ranked Ramblers, the defending NCAA champions, rallied in the first set, then rumbled to a 25-22, 25-19, 25-17 triumph to end No. 1-ranked and No. 2-seeded UCI's bid for a fifth national crown in nine seasons.”
That sentence is completely inaccessible by anyone other than the relatively very few people who live in the coverage area and follow volleyball closely enough to care. Everybody else might as well be reading instructions on how to code a website.
(I picked the Pilot at random. Any daily news org with regular game coverage would have revealed a similarly difficult paragraph, high up in the story. And, in all fairness to the Pilot, some of their sports coverage, particularly their player profiles, are very well written.)
I believe this is a problem sports departments need to overcome.
Now, let me be clear — I am not suggesting that all sports writing should be Shakespeare. Just accessible. Nor am I suggesting that all sports writing should be Dr. Seuss, just not the athletic equivalent of a DVD player installation manual.
I cannot hope to solve this problem, though I know there are solutions — some of which involve the very construction of news organizations and are way above my pay grade.
Nonetheless, I have put together examples of some of the best sportswriting ever, with a little explanation of what younger sports writers (and science, health, education, food, courts and general topic reporters) can learn from these examples.
By: Mark Kram
What can be learned: Acknowledging flaws and depth to benefit the narrative. Too often, a sense of idolatry comes through in sports pieces. We revere these Gods-among-men, even as we call them bums and blame them for the downfall of polite society. Kram, covering Mohammad Ali, writes how fragile Ali seemed after the fight, which makes the triumph feel all the more, well, triumphant.
Excerpt: “The maddest of existentialists, one of the great surrealists of our time, the king of all he sees, Ali had never before appeared so vulnerable and fragile, so pitiably unmajestic, so far from the universe he claims as his alone. He could barely hold his fork, and he lifted the food slowly up to his bottom lip, which had been scraped pink.”
By: Hunter S. Thompson
What can be learned: Putting yourself in the story. This is not a traditional news piece, and Thompson is really making fun of the Derby rather than celebrating it. But he is the story, as much as the Derby itself. By unabashedly making himself the main character, he turned the story on its head, and made unique and unforgettable.
Excerpt: “In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other--"but just call me Jimbo"--and he was here to get it on. "I'm ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?" I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn't hear of it: "Naw, naw...what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What's wrong with you, boy?" He grinned and winked at the bartender. "Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey..."
I shrugged. "Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice." Jimbo nodded his approval.”
By: John Updike
What can be learned: Setting the scene. Before the reader knows anything about the characters in the story, Updike gives a detailed and complex description of where the story takes place. It sets more than the scene, but the tone and pace of the entire piece. And even if you’ve been to Fenway 100 times, Updike’s eyes are good at picking up the sense of the place.
Excerpt: “Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities. Its right field is one of the deepest in the American League, while its left field is the shortest; the high left-field wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from home plate along the foul line, virtually thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters.”
By: Frank Deford
What can be learned: Allowing your characters to drive the story. It’s a story about tennis great Jimmy Connors, that begins with the presumption that there was a time before Connors was a tennis great. He is a human being, not a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out of a sports star, and Deford goes to great lengths to bring all three dimensions into focus.
Excerpt: “A kind of incompleteness plagues Connors. In the big tournaments, the ones he shoots for, he virtually never loses until the finals. What is it there? What seizes him at the last step? There is a flaw somewhere, something that denies him consummation in his life.”
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