In my first job out of college, I worked as a sportswriter for a small daily newspaper in Pennsylvania, and one of the primary duties involved covering high school football teams.
Reporting local sports for a small daily newspaper is mostly enjoyable, but there are life concessions. I spent nights and weekends working, ate cold leftovers on Thanksgiving and learned how to subsist on lots of really bad coffee. Especially in football-frenzied Pennsylvania, where the now-defunct newspaper was located, a high school team commanded a lot of attention. One particular story helped me learn a valuable lesson that sticks with me more than 40 years later.
In one of my first game stories, I wrote an unfortunate sentence about a player that was critical and downright mean. A good editor would have deleted it, but in small newsrooms, editing was a luxury. The player’s father, rightly so, wrote an angry letter and I felt embarrassed. High school athletes don’t deserve that kind of commentary.
The lesson that I took away from that experience is that words matter. The right word choice — whether it’s an article, a press release or an email to a colleague — is of paramount importance.
Get It Write
There is a lot involved in written communication. Variable sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and accurate thought conveyance are all components that writers should take seriously to craft their piece with pride. A well-written piece, however, can be instantaneously ruined with incorrect word choice.
As I’ve evolved as a writer, I’ve tried to be conscious of and improve my vocabulary and language precision. I’ve always admired sports writers from bygone eras who cranked out well-crafted pieces on tight deadlines. Red Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter from the New York Times, famously said, “Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out, drop by drop.” While I no longer write sports stories, writers such as Smith and a handful of others established a template for storytelling that I admire.
Read the room
One other important takeaway that evolved from those early days walking along football field sidelines was learning how to read people, which has been invaluable in my public relations work.
Asking questions to a coach who just suffered an excruciating championship game setback is no easy assignment. It requires patience, thoughtfulness and the ability to quickly assess whether the interview is likely to be confrontational, congenial or somewhere in between. I saw all sides of that coin and managed (mostly!) to steer clear of venom from the coaches. I think coaches I’ve interviewed will say that I was fair and accurate, which I believe is the hallmark of a good journalist.
I loved my long career as an ink-stained wretch, especially covering football games. As September (and football season!) rolls in, I often think back to the outset of my professional journey, and the lessons I learned from my career as a sportswriter that are still relevant today. Selecting the right word might not be as glamorous as scoring a touchdown with a 79-yard bomb on a third-down blitz, but it’s an apt comparison.
