CW2 Weekly Blog

Week 1 – 30th September 2019 – History Of Sports Journalism

In the first week of semester 1, we learned about the history of sports Journalism and how the media landscape has massively changed since the first reported use of sports journalism in 1720 which were village cricket reports. Since then the desire for sports news in all forms has only grew and is now available on every platform, device and form it could be. From traditional newspapers, magazines, fan channels, websites and now social media the landscape is always evolving to keep up with latest trends and technology leading to the industry earning billions of pounds a year. The monopoly on the TV rights being the biggest financial talking point with companies such as Sky which were the first company to have the exclusive rights to the premier league when they paid £304 million in 1992 just a year after the creation of sky sports and most recently BT and Amazon fighting for the rights to games every year. Media has also changed massively with the development of technology with new cameras and software allowing for all the best angles on the pitch and different ways of covering the game in the studio. 

Social Media is also now a massive part of the landscape with this allowing fans to interact with clubs, players, journalists and other fans at any time. This isn’t always positive as the impact of Arsenal Fan TV has shown which was created in 2012, which is another huge development in the industry. These Fan channels act as an official platform for the supporter who goes to the games week in week out to get their voice heard to potentially hundreds of thousands of people with opinions ranging from positive and passionate to aggressive and unproductive. From papers and magazines in the 1800s to full highlights and reactions moments after a game on almost every device, it shows that there has been a huge change in the way sports media is handled in the modern world.

Week 2 – 7th October 2019 – Media Ethics & Law

In the second week the main focus was about ethics in the media and the laws that you have to follow in order to accuartly cover stories and use sources. Since there are no state controls on who can run or own a news site or paper it is up to the company themselves to portray themselves in a good manor that has respect for the indivituals in the stories and to not run fake news stories. However in the past there has been lots of cases of news papers running inaccurate stories and paying the price in the future wither this be a fall in sales, ruined reputation or sanctions and investigations put in place by a governing body.

The IPSO and Impress are a few official regulation services that have been set up in the last few years in order to protect individuals rights and hold the various newspapers accountable for the stories the publish which could be a positive or negative story.

Week 3 – 14th October 2019 – News Sources

In week 3 we covered the different types of news sources that a journalist could use to publish a story or find out more knowledge on a situation. In sports media there are many ways such as press conferences, AGMs which are the chance for shareholders and therefore in most cases supporters to ask questions directly to the board and then matches themselves to name a few that allow a reporter to gain information and therefore inform the public on a story. Some may have contacts in the industry which could be within a club, a players agent or some other insider that would allow for a potential exclusive story that only that journalist would have leading to potentially more traction for the newspaper or website.

In week 4 we learned about how to produce an effective and informative presentation which would be useful for the first assignment as this was a group presentation. These included, speaking clearly with good points but not just filling the presentation slides with information as most good presentations are minimal and only give the speaker visual aids and prompts. The importance of practicing before hand and being yourself when speaking was also helpful as it allowed you to see how well the presentation flowed and if anything needed changing.

Week 5 – 4th November 2019 – Writing a match report

Week 5 commenced after reading week and was focused on writing a match report on a live game, this allowed us to gain valuable experience as I had never done one before. It showed how facts are brought into the report and when to use figures and stats. It also showed me how to limit myself to a certain word count as not every report can be very long. Evidence of this was used on the CW2 assignment.

Week 6 – 18th November 2019 – Live blogging/Tweeting

Week 6 included how to live blog and live tweet about a game while trying to watch and keep up with the game at the same time. This was difficult as I missed important parts of the game sometimes because of this. That allowed for me to learn how quickly note down key events and and again showed the importance of stats and lineup intonation as it allowed me to check things during the game to help with reports.

Week 7 – 2nd December 2019 – Radio style reporting

One of the final weeks before assignment 2 and the Christmas peirod was about a radio style of reporting and how to do flash updates as seen on TV and radio. This had us talking for 30 seconds about an event on the game, seconds after it happened. This allowed us to express ourselves more creatively as we were not focused on typing and missing something but instead describe something we have seen just after it happened. This helped me see different ways of talking about similar events rather than repeating the same thing.