Loading ...Jason Fry was a good read when I first encountered ”The Daily Fix”, his Wall Street Journal column of a few years ago. Then he moved on to the National Sports Journalism Center, to blog about how to write for the web, using social media, access and coverage, and how new digital outlets are re-shaping the sports media landscape. Another blog of his, Reinventing the Newsroom, explores the future of journalism in the digital age. He remains a good - and provocative – read.
Now Fry has collected 19 of his best columns into an e-book, “Sportswriting in the Digital Age”. Among his ideas, in “Inside and Outside the Press Box”, he writes: “When it comes to commodity news, scoops are all but worthless, and reporters should quit chasing them and focus on smart analysis instead…To remain must-reads, smart sportswriters are getting good at aggregation, summarizing and providing links to their competitors in a way that would have been heresy a decade ago.”
Not sure the Yahoo! writers who broke the stories on NCAA violations in the U-Miami football program would agree that scoops are worthless, and Fry makes a distinction between commodity scoops and investigative work. Anybody trying to build, or revive, a career in sports media would do well to read Fry’s work. His practical advice includes “A Twitter Primer” – a relatively painless five-step plan for harnessing Twitter’s millions of users.
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