The Last Dance of Sports Information
- ksizzle00009
- May 3, 2021
- 2 min read
Well, everyone, we made it to our final blog posts for this class! It has not always been easy, but we are here ready to end off on a strong note. During this final lecture, Mr. Vareberg touched on sports during covid and what impacts they have had. This is where I want to spend some of my time on this blog.
NBA bubble
One of the major adaptations last year during covid was taken by the NBA. All teams that made it to the playoffs were put into a bubble to play the entire playoffs. This way the NBA could make sure covid did not derail the highly anticipated NBA playoffs. It wasn’t always easy keeping hundreds of players quarantined and motivated to play, but they definitely made it work. They did not just cope, they adapted. Because of the delay last year, leading to the bubble, the NBA has now made schedule changes and the season started this last winter rather than in the fall. What did they do? They adapted and made the best of covid.
Electronic Sports
What sports have taken off during covid times? Esports! Many sports fans turned to Esports to fulfill their sports need when we couldn’t have live-action. Even major leagues such as the NFL embraced Esports. For last year's NFL pro bowl, they had the players face off in a game of Madden instead of hosting a live event pro bowl. I believe now we will see more esport events take place between prime-time athletes, especially now that many of the players in the NBA, NFL and MLS play video games. This is where the Twitch stream has taken off, and many pro athletes have used it to build their personal brand.
Coverage of Sports
Covid also had a big impact on the people who cover sports, including sports journalists. You had to be able to adapt and utilize technology more than ever before. Twitter was a huge platform for sports to be able to flourish, and athletes continued to use Instagram to connect with the fans during times of quarantine.
Final reflections
At the beginning of the semester, we set out to learn the five essential skills:
1. Crafting ledes
2. Writing for various sports channels
3. Conducting interviews with open-ended questions
4. Correctly using AP style
5. Adapting for different sports audiences
I would say through our assignments on social media, print, digital, interviews and AP style, I feel that I now have a good handle on all of these five essential skills. Now I want to ask my final question for all of you. Which of these five essential skills do you feel you are best at? And which one do you feel you are worst at and will continue to try and improve upon in the future?
I hope you all have had a great semester and enjoyed my weekly blogs. I definitely enjoyed reading all of your blogs and learning along the way. I wish you all the best in your future schooling/careers! Signing off.
-Kurt Simmons
Kurt, I think of the essential skills we learned. The strongest one for me would be conducting interviews and writing ledes that what I feel the most comfortable with. As with my weakest one being AP style its hard to learn that just in a semester there is so much information you have to know about AP style and it is not something you wake up the next day knowing.
Kurt, of the five essential skills, I think my strongest is conducting open ended questions. Only because I took a previous course on interviews and questioning, so it is a bit more familiar to me. The skill I need to improve on is my AP style writing. It is a lot of information, and it is important to get it correct. Great posts this semester!
Out of the five essential skills, I'm best at conducting interviews. My worst skill is probably AP Style, I know deep inside I need to work and improve this skill.
Kurt,
I would like to say that I think I have a pretty good grasp on all of the skills - simply because I work in sports information and have been exposed to most of them previously. I do think that this final assignment with adaptability will be a great challenge for me, as it looks a little unfamiliar to me compared to the other assignments. Interviewing was also a little bit of a challenge for me, as with COVID, I had to transition to email interview - so I did not get as much exposure to the type of interviews we worked on in class.
I enjoy your coverage of the semester's material. Good work!
Hannah