I have always found comfort in the fact that I can choose which direction I want my journalism degree to take me. Journalists can specialize in any topic or no topic at all. Journalists can write about national politics, world events, fashion, science, technology or even journalism itself.
This brings me to the topic of sports journalism, a segment of news that undoubtedly causes me to change the channel or flip the page.
I wrote my very first sports story for a journalism class I took while studying abroad in South Africa. I covered a cricket match. Before I began research for my article, I thought cricket was croquet. As one could imagine, it was probably not the best cricket journalism in the world, but it was decent. Plus, my professor took pity on me for being a confused foreigner and was proud of me for trying to write about cricket, a sport that hardly even exists to many Americans.
Recently, I wrote my second sports story about the Cal Poly softball team. It was a preseason preview story, so it did not require much technical knowledge of the softball/sport world, but I still found myself having to ask some dumb questions and struggling with the wording of certain sport-oriented things.
For a while, out of frustration, I started thinking that I do not want to write about sports and I do not know enough about sports so therefore I don’t think I should be required or even allowed to write about sports. I wondered if it would be better for readers if the person doing their sports reporting actually knew what they are talking about.
Then I stopped whining to myself, and started wondering if I was being a lazy (therefore, bad) journalist. Should I be able to confidently report on any topic that would appear in a standard newspaper?
Journalism professor Bill Loving said it is a flaw for reporters to cop out of reporting on certain topics because it is part of a learning process.
“The desire and willingness to try and to learn is what separates a good reporter from a person who should be selling shoes,” Loving said.
I do see how writing outside of one’s comfort zone can improve reporting skills. It forces a reporter to do more in-depth research and really think about word choice and story structure.
But aren’t journalists often assigned beats because of the advantages of reporting on a topic the journalist is familiar with? According to an America.gov article on specialized journalism, beat reporters come to understand the inner workings of their beat.
It seemed to me that the journalist who understands their beat has a good relationship with beat sources and experience reporting in their beat would be the best person to report on that topic.
Journalism senior Caitlin Schmitt saw both sides. She said although it is an important skill for a journalist to have to be able to report on any topic, sports may be an exception.
“In the real world, there are so many people that want to report sports and only sports, so it doesn’t seem like you would have to write about it if that wasn’t your specialty,” Schmitt said. “It is kind of separate from other forms of news.”
I came to the conclusion that reporting on a topic that a person does not have knowledge or interest in is important for a journalism school setting. It pushes our limits as journalists and makes us explore new ways to approach an interview, find an angle and build a story.
But ultimately, I believe a journalist needs to have passion for what they are writing about because from a journalistic stance, passion for a topic can translate into the best, most objective and most effective kind of reporting.