Behind the Scenes at the New University Sports Section
Tyler Davis | Oct 29, 2007 | Comments 0
Oct. 3, 2007 remains a memorable day for the sports section of the New University. It is the only day that somebody emailed the sports section and volunteered to cover a UC Irvine sports game this year.
Aside from this isolated aberrational event, trying to persuade prospective sports writers to cover their school’s teams feels like pulling teeth.
Unsurprisingly, there is a surplus of writers eager to discuss the Kobe Bryant drama, the Lakers status quo, a thorough scope of the upcoming NBA season and why the Dodgers had a disappointing year, and why not? After all, these are the kinds of topics that appeal to most sports fans; naturally, it seems more attractive to write about your favorite basketball team that you know everything about than to cover a golf or water polo match if you don’t know how either sport is played.
This creates somewhat of a debacle for the sports editor and the associate sports editor when it comes time to cover a UCI sport. Needless to say, going to each UCI home game, taking notes, conducting post-game interviews, writing articles and piecing together the section on production day is a daunting task for two students.
As a result, some of the myriad professional sports articles are published for the sake of diversity (what kind of sports section is comprised of only two writers?) Plus, where’s the harm in having college students write about professional sports in a college newspaper? Gauging by the topics that prospective writers suggest, there is certainly a demand for coverage of professional sports.
Nevertheless, there has been a fair amount of backlash to publishing articles about teams unrelated to UCI. Many feel that the New University should focus exclusively on this school’s athletic programs. This is certainly a fair opinion. The problem is that there is an insufficient number of sports writers willing to make that happen
Popularity: unranked [?]
Filed Under: Sports
