SPORTS REPORTING
ENW 322 FALL 2003
INSTRUCTOR: Jack Cavanaugh Home Phone:
203-834-2794
Class Meets T & F
Office Hours: Tuesday and Friday
in Donnarumma Hall.
Generally I will be on campus during
class days, but meetings can be arranged at the mutual
convenience of the instructor and students.
Prerequisites:
College-level
skills in spelling, punctuation, grammar, writing and typing and
Familiarity with computer word processing. Interest in at least a rudimentary
Knowledge of sports.
Required materials:
·
Pocket dictionary
·
Stenographer’s notebook or legal-sized pad for
game reportage and for class notes
·
Floppy discs for classroom computers
·
Home dictionary.
I recommend the American Heritage Dictionary. Third Edition.
Suggested
supplementary texts:
·
AP Stylebook & Libel Manual. Perseus Books.
·
The Elements of Style. Macmillan Publishing Co. By William Strunk
Jr. and E. B. White. Excellent and
entertaining book on grammar that many writers resort to throughout, and even
beyond, their careers. Highly
recommended, especially for students who have some difficulty with grammar and
punctuation.
·
A thesaurus.
Instructor recommends Roget’s or The Oxford American Thesaurus of
Current English.
Overview of Course:
This will be a serious journalism course during which you
will learn the basic fundamentals of sports writing, with a heavy emphasis on
clear and lively writing
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and accurate and comprehensive
reporting. By the end of the semester,
you will have learned how to:
·
Overcome any fears and apprehensions, such as
“writer’s block”, that you may have a the beginning of
the course.
·
Write lucid and comprehensive sports stories.
·
Write enticing leads that seize the attention of
readers.
·
Write sports feature stories.
·
Cover a wide variety of sports events, including
baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis and golf.
·
Prepare for coverage of games and other sports
events.
·
Conduct interviews with coaches, players and
others.
·
Take effective game notes – scoring, running
accounts, etc.
·
Cope with deadlines by writing backup copy in
advance and during games and other sports events.
The course also will cover the changing role of
sportswriters, and to a lesser degree sports broadcasters, over the last decade. Largely because of
skyrocketing salaries and revenues, the latter at both the
professional and college level, sportswriting has
become much more demanding and complex over the last decade. Moreover, the breach between sports writers
and the athletes they cover has continued to widen. More than ever before, far more coverage is
now given to non-game matters such as contract disputes, free agency franchise
shifts, controversies over public funding for stadiums and sports arenas for
multimillionaire owners
and millionaire athletes, substance abuse, a steep rise in the
arrests for athletes and the increasingly rowdy, and even violent, behavior of
spectators. We will also touch on
Class Format:
Early lectures will focus on the above points and will be
supplemented by several guest speakers from the field of sports journalism,
both print and broadcast. Students will
be assigned to a minimum of 12 sports events to cover, including Fairfield
University men’s and women’s basketball and hockey games and baseball, softball
and lacrosse games and if time permits tennis feature stories, two of which
will be assigned, while the others will be written at the students own
discretion. Game stories will either be
written in class the day after the event when possible or written immediately
after the event when possible or written immediately after the event on a
deadline basis and sent via email to the instructor. In some cases, students will be permitted to
write stories and leave them in the instructor’s mailbox in the Donnarumma
English office by
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Assignments written on a deadline basis will be given periodically during classes. Students also will edit, critique and evaluate one another’s stories in class, making sure to put their names on the top of the first paper of the stories. Several sports writers, sports columnists will speak to the class.
Requirements:
1.
Students will be expected to read the sports section of
the Connecticut Post daily,
along with the paper’s news section, and also The Mirror. Stories in both papers will be analyzed and
evaluated in class on a regular basis.
It is also recommended that students read at least the sports section –
and hopefully more – of a
2. All assignments must be typed and double-spaced on 8-1/2 by 11 inch which
copy paper.
3. Do not break up sentences at the bottom of a page. Instead, start a new
sentence on the succeeding page. Also, make certain to write MORE at the bottom of a page when your story is not yet complete and to write END/jc (with your initials after the END) or to write ### at the end of your stories.
4. In editing copy, students are to be use standard journalistic copy symbols from
the Associated Press Style Book.
5. On all written assignments, students must, in the upper left hand corner, write
on separate lines their names, the course number, the date the assignment is
due (or, in cases where assignments are handed in late, the date the
assignment
was handed in along with the date it was due)
and the slug for the
story (e.g., STAGS). On succeeding pages, on separate lines, your name and
the slug should also be in the upper left corner – e.g., JONES, 1st add
STAGGS, and then, on succeeding pages, JONES, 2nd add STAGS, again
with the name and slug on separate lines.
6. All assignments must be handed in on time. Late assignments will cost
students one full grade unless there are mitigating circumstances.
7. All work must be submitted at the beginning of class, or in advance, clipped
together and not stapled.
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GRADING SUMMARY
Twelve (approximately)
Game Assignments (each worth 5 points) 60 points
Four feature stories (each worth 5 points) 20 points
Class quizzes 10 points
Class participation 10 points
EXTRA CREDIT
I strongly urge students to write for the campus newspaper, The Mirror, either on a staff or freelance basis and also, if possible, do sports internships. In some cases, students may be encouraged by me to submit to The Mirror certain stories that have been written for class. However, when you are working on a story that you believe may be worthy of submitting to The Mirror it is imperative that you inform anyone being interviewed that your story may appear in the campus paper. Grades on stories written for class that appear in The Mirror will increase by half a letter grade; thus, a B will be increased to an A-. I can not stress hard enough how important newspaper clippings of your work – either in the campus newspaper or in other publications – can be during a job search. I will at times note at the end of a paper whether I think it is a good prospect for The Mirror.
ATTENDANCE
Attendance will be taken at the
beginning of each class. You will be
permitted two cuts without penalty.
After that, starting with a third cut, you will be penalized 2 points
for each cut, meaning that with 5 cuts you will have accumulated 10 penalty
points, which will be deducted during the calculation of your grade. Absences for valid reason -- illness, family emergencies, etc. – must be given in advance whenever possible
or at the latest by
INSTRUCTOR’S WRITING BACKGROUND
More than 30 years as a print journalist. Currently cover sports for The New York Times, as I have for the last 15 years. In addition have written for Sports Illustrated, the Reader’s Digest, Golf Digest, Tennis Magazine, The Sporting News and the inflight magazines for American, Delta and United Airlines. Author of “Damn the Disabilities: Full Speed Ahead!” a book about people, most of them young, who have
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overcome disabilities to excel in sports. Currently writing a book for Random House
on the life and times of former heavyweight champion Gene Tunney.
PLAGARISM
Under no circumstances should any student pass off someone else’s worse as their own. That is plagiarism, a serious offense which, if proven, can lead to an F in the course. Also, do not recycle any past writing assignments in this class. That too, can lead to an F in the course.
EXTRA HELP
Although the instructor will correct grammatical mistakes in
stories to the best of his ability, students who have difficulty with grammar,
punctuation/or sentence structure. The