Sports Writers Struggle With Pandemic and Reporting from Far Away
Matt Hanifan details challenges different sports reporters have been facing during the pandemic. He goes in-depth about the potential struggles of obtaining interviews, the vast difference of recapping games from one’s own home, potential permanent changes after the pandemic and also some of the positives of writing about sports during COVID-19.
A Sports World Initially Put on Pause
“The day the sports world stopped”, headlined the New York Post, the widely read publication, on March 12, 2020.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament — which would’ve taken place the following week — cancelled its tournament. The National Basketball Association (NBA), along with the National Hockey Association (NHL) and the PGA Tour promptly suspended their seasons. Major League Baseball soon followed, cancelling the remainder of spring training and didn’t elect to begin its regular season until late July.
The sports world across the United States was temporarily put on pause due to a deadly virus that nobody could contain.
This did not affect just athletes or organizations, but sportswriters too.
Internships were postponed; jobs were furloughed; for weeks, headlines surfaced on when, and more importantly if, seasons would begin again.
Last September, Madeleine Chinery wrote about Nevada alum and a current NFL free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who is also a social justice activist, being allowed to be back in the Madden video game after being out of it since 2016.
What to Cover During a Pandemic?
For two co-sports editors, Isaiah Burrows and Madeleine Chinery, at the Nevada Sagebrush — the student newspaper for the University of Nevada, Reno — the beginning of the pandemic was a confounding time for their coverage. But the two motivated journalists found ample opportunity throughout the difficult transition.
“There was a point in time from about April and May where I didn’t even touch writing,” Burrows said. “I think of sportswriting as a passion for me to get back out there and put yourself out there and I got that fire back again. And ever since then, I think the pandemic’s helped me … So many story ideas started clicking.”
“The whole situation was shocking to me,” Chinery said. “But once I realized there were opportunities to write more profile and feature stories, I was excited to come up with story ideas.”
The Nevada Wolf Pack men’s basketball team was nearly a week removed from dropping its quarterfinal matchup against Wyoming in the Mountain West Tournament. The Pack, who finished the regular season at 19–12, were slotted in for potential postseason tournaments for the NIT or the CBI, two lower tournaments than the main NCAA competition. All tournaments became cancelled, giving them a bitter end to their season.
An Abrupt and Sad Ending for Some
The cancellation of Nevada Athletics was a surprising, yet disenchanting end to a college hobby for then-college senior Austin Paschke, who hosted a podcast called Pack Center at the time.
“It was a bit strange because we were in the middle of the basketball season and I was going to the games and sitting at the press table and going to post game press conferences,” Paschke said.
“That is when I realized that the basketball season was truly over. I then realized that I would never be able to cover Nevada basketball for Pack Center any more. It was a sad moment for sure.”
It became difficult for Paschke, who was restricted from recording the podcast via his laptop because the University was closed, thus the Reynolds School of Journalism podcasting studio — where the podcast was typically produced — was also barred from anyone entering.
“The audio quality just isn’t the same when conducting the interview over the phone rather than in person.” Paschke now contributes for a website called Mountain West Wire.
A New Sense of Perspective
For Mountain West Connection website manager Mike Wittmann, the pandemic gave him a sense of perspective.
“Although sports isn’t my entire life, it is a significant part,” Wittmann said. “ I never thought I’d live in a world where sports were shut down along with so much of the world. One of the first things I remember doing is writing a column entitled ‘Why We Need Sports’, which discussed the impact of sports on our lives. Then of course my attention turned to how we were going to keep our content and viewership up on the site.”
“Like most people at the time, I was in disbelief and figured things would resume by the start of summer or thought there was no way football would be impacted in August. Of course, I was wrong in all accounts.”
There have been keen differences from covering athletics — whether it’s a certain team, beat or sport. Nobody was able to access in-person interviews or roam around in locker rooms; initially almost everything moved to virtual.
In January, Burrows wrote about Arizona Diamondbacks prospect Corbin Carroll rising up the organizations’ farm system rankings.
The challenges with Interviews
Burrows, who also contributes for online websites Prospects Live and AZ Snake Pit, found it more difficult to conduct one-on-one feature stories.
“I do truly believe when you do talk to a person in the flesh, you get better quotes because you are able to make eye contact among other things,” Burrows said. “This pandemic has taught me to be more versatile in the questions that I ask.”
With different COVID-19 restrictions, writers are being forced to transition to more phone or digital interviews.
For Nevada Athletics, the weekly and postgame press conferences — specifically for the football plus men’s and women’s basketball teams — are being held over Zoom, as opposed to the previous typical interviews in press conference rooms, freeing some time for reporters.
“[The pandemic] has helped me use my resources now more than ever,” Burrows said. “My schedule has been more free than ever because I am able to be more versatile and be more available because of the technology I have in store. I can go to my phone; I can go to zoom; I can talk to people over email to schedule things. When I do that, I can finish one and go right to another.”
Burrows also talked about how difficult it can be for a writer to go from one in-person interview to another, and how online interviews allowed him to publish more multiple-sourced interviews.
For Chinery, virtual interviews eases the emotional pressure than an in-person interview can possess.
“Now that everything is virtual, I don’t have to physically go to an office or athletic facility, I can do it over the phone, Zoom or over email which is less stressful for me,” she said.
Conducting prospect interviews for Burrows has presented challenges because of getting in contact with them, but he has used the pandemic as an opportunity to gather information from secondary sources.
“I’m talking to a lot more experts, a lot more directors and a lot more people who have knowledge in that subject,” he said.
However, for Wittmann, the interview process has been similar.
“The interview process hasn’t really changed. Most of our interviews are over the phone, or else through email,” he said. “However, the time or willingness to do interviews has decreased. People were busier or less willing due to their stress of handling their lives in a pandemic world.”
Will there be any permanent changes after the pandemic?
With vaccines slowly being rolled out to different health officials and a small section of the public, the sports world is gaining a very miniscule degree of normalcy. More sports are taking place; fans, at a limited capacity, are allowed to enter sports arenas depending on the state’s governing laws.
But for media members, who are being restricted to Zoom conferences coupled with limited credentials, permanent changes could arise with how sports media members are allowed to operate.
Burrows highlighted that he believes the days of interacting with players in the locker room, paired with showing up to the ballpark for beat writers is “long gone,” at least for the foreseeable future.
Chinery suggests the potential idea of coaches or players opting for virtual interviews, even when things are back to normal.
“If there is the option to conduct them virtually, I think more people would be inclined to do it that way if they have a busy schedule,” she said.
Wittmann suggests that Mountain West media days — days where players and coaches collectively gather in one location for interviews prior to the respective seasons — could move virtually for the next few seasons, if not permanently, due to the fact that multiple people from different states gathering in one area could be hazardous.
Above, Wittmann details a collaborative top-10 list for the top football recruits in the 2021 recruiting class among Mountain West programs.
Couch recapping?
No, sportswriters aren’t recapping couches.
But since there has been limited media access to games, sportswriters have had to transition to covering games from the couches of their own homes.
“The recaps have been much tougher,” Burrows said. “I like having a human aspect to those recaps because I think of every single one of them as a chapter to how the season progresses.”
Different local sports companies — such as Nevada Sports Net, Reno Gazette Journal and Tahoe Onstage — write recaps for Nevada Athletics. For some writers, it can serve as a competition to publish their stories first.
The benefits of writing recaps from home is the ability to post stories immediately in the comfort of your own home, while obtaining quotes through different technological devices.
“The pandemic showed everyone how technology can be used in media,” Paschke said. “Media coverage and press questions could be taken care of over zoom in the comfort of the coaches office rather than the media room.”
Positives about covering sports during the pandemic?
There are not a lot of positives to take away from the pandemic. More than two million people, including 450,000 United States citizens have died from COVID-19.
I asked each writer what was their favorite part, or what they got most out of being a sportswriter during the pandemic. Here were their responses:
Chinery: “My favorite part about covering sports during the pandemic is being able to connect with people over something over than the sport they play … I think some of the best stories written during the pandemic have been about the people who make the sport, and not the sport itself.”
Burrows: “One of the things that I took so much pride was during the month of June was when minor league baseball was officially cancelled. And when that happened, the huge fallout of prospects who did not make a team’s alternate training site camp and did not make a team’s instructional league, there were hundreds of players out of jobs in terms of professional baseball. So with that, there were independent leagues that were opening up with players to join. I came up with the idea to interview a couple former [Reno Aces] who were amongst those people … I was just so proud of the work I did at that moment because the world, at that point, was so lost. So I found a way to put my work out there and say ‘I’m still doing this. I’m still being able to produce that type of content and these guys are seriously affected by this. You should read this story.’ … It was those types of personal connections that I was so proud of.”
Wittmann: “Through all the stress and positive cases and cancelled games, seeing the joy from the players and coaches every time teams were able to play has been the best part. Seeing and hearing the joy from people doing what they love never gets old, no matter the environment.”
Paschke: “I like the ability to do everything from the comfort of my own home. While I would much rather be at the games covering the team, I like being able to write recaps and other pieces from my house. Other than that this pandemic has made covering the team a bit more challenging.”
