After a year of social distancing and league bubbles, a Houston sports broadcaster says journalists are losing control of their ability to create unique content about the teams they cover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Closed locker rooms and all-virtual press conferences made it possible for teams to put new limits on the interaction between reporters and athletes, said Matt Musil, sports broadcaster of KHOU 11 out of Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think the teams want to keep it on Zoom,\u201d Musil said. \u201cThey will say it’s for health concerns, but I think it\u2019s easier to control the message. If there are players that are not happy with management or ownership of their teams, we would talk with them in the locker room or the clubhouse. But (now) if they aren\u2019t getting along with management they will not be made available to reporters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John Affleck, Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society at Penn State University, said that limited face-to-face interaction hurts sports fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople value authenticity\u2014fans, younger fans in particular, value authenticity and value people speaking from the heart and telling it like it is,\u201d Affleck said. \u201cThe pandemic will undoubtedly be used by teams (or) leagues to limit media contact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that\u2019s a problem because a less authentic product becomes less interesting to sports fans, who are also the consumers of sports journalism. Less interest \u201cmeans fewer viewers and fewer viewers mean less revenue, so that\u2019s a problem for sports they need to think about,\u201d Affleck said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOn our storytelling side, journalists do better when they understand how a team works,\u201d Affleck said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If interview time is limited to two 15-minute Zooms per week, \u201cthat\u2019s not really understanding how a team works,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emily Giangreco, sports anchor and reporter at KVUE in Austin, said virtual interviews can be beneficial for reporters on deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t like we got to take several months off of work because there were no sports, we had to come up with different ideas that may have been a little out of our realm.<\/p>Emily Giangreco, sports anchor and reporter at KVUE, in Austin<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Pre-pandemic, reporters were used to working in a post-game \u201cscrum,\u201d Giangreco said. \u201cYou run around with your camera and microphone and you\u2019re trying to grab as many players as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Switching to virtual interviews has not been all bad, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith Zoom, it makes it a lot more organized and you\u2019re not running around trying to get [athletes], they just bring players to you and they put them on Zoom. Also, we\u2019re not running around as much because everything is right at our laptop, so when it does come to getting content in and deadline that does tend to make it a little easier,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giangreco said one thing she learned through her COVID-19 experience is \u201cwe really had to get creative because sports completely stopped\u201d when the pandemic began. She and other sports reporters had to step outside their comfort zones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like we got to take several months off of work because there were no sports, we had to come up with different ideas that may have been a little out of our realm,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite this kind of creative response, Musil says athletes \u201care more measured with their comments\u201d when they know multiple people are hearing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes they won\u2019t say certain things that they would if they were just one on one,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to maintain the message that the ownership and management wants for the particular sports team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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