Blog Post 3: The Struggle with Game Previews

Football game previews have proven, at least for me, to be far more difficult to write than the game recaps. At the Missourian, we like to write about people and not just the game itself. This makes the story more interesting, as the reader is relating to an actual person and not just reading a dry analysis of a game. I’m fully on board with this philosophy and think this makes for better writing.

It poses challenges, however, when writing a preview for a game. The game hasn’t happened yet, you have limited access to the team through practice, and (since I just started reported on high school football last week) I really don’t have a ton of foundational a priori knowledge about the local teams. I find it very difficult to write a compelling story about character for a piece that is mainly designed to preview two teams going into a game. It’s possible, but it’s a challenge that is going to take practice (which is obviously the whole point of this class). Writing good stories about people will get easier the more practice I get, and especially once I develop a rapport with teams. Luckily I wasn’t expecting to be good at journalism write from the start, so I’m really appreciating this learning process.