The first draft of journalism: How blogging as affected sports journalists' roles and routines

Running Head: ‘The first draft of journalism’

Abstract

This pilot study examines how blogging has affected the roles and routines of

sports journalists. Eight in-depth interviews with sports reporters who keep a blog as a

part of their beat were conducted over a one-month time frame. The interviews revealed

six ways the reporters conceptualize and utilize their blogs; that newspaper blogs are

written and maintained within a hierarchy of print; and that keeping blogs has

revolutionized the relationship between reporters and readers.

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‘The first draft of journalism’ 2

Game days and deadlines

After the first decade of the 21st century, the newspaper industry finds itself undergoing a

seismic change. In 2009, circulation for print newspapers fell by more than 10 percent

from the previous year while at the same time, newspaper’s websites received 11 million

more unique visitors than the year before (Perez-Pena, 2009). Those figures paint a vivid

picture of a world in which more and more people are going online to get their news

rather than buying the traditional print newspaper every day.

Virtually every newspaper in the United States publishes some sort of electronic

online edition (Berkman & Shumway, 2003). Since this practice began in the mid-to-late

1990s, newspapers have added features to their online editions to make them more

interactive and fluid than their print editions. One of the most significant has been blogs

kept by the newspaper’s reporters, and of the most popular subjects for newspaper blogs

is sports (Pew, 2008).

The purpose of this pilot study is to understand the effect blogging has had on the

roles and routines of sports reporters through the use of in-depth interviews. Prior

research in this field has examined newspaper blogs – or J-blogs as they are commonly

referred to in the academic literature (Robinson, 2006; Singer, 2005) - through surveys

and textual analysis. This study will expand upon that work through the use of in-depth

interviews with reporters to get a more detailed picture of how a newspaper blog is

conceptualized and operationalized in the day-to-day newspaper world.

In the 15 years or so that newspapers have published online edition, blogs have

emerged as a key component of a newspaper’s online identity (Pew, 2008; Robinson,

2006). If the future of journalism and of newspapers lies online, as the circulation

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numbers indicate, then every aspect of online journalism should be examined in detail.

Studying how sports journalists blog will allow scholars to see get an accurate picture of

the industry at this transitional juncture.

Sports are a valuable area to research not just because it is a popular multi-billion

dollar industry, but also because they are a natural topic for blogging due to the

passionate opinions they bring out (Schultz and Sheffer, 2007). Also, because sports

blogs are common at newspapers (Pew, 2008), they provide an appropriate lens through

which to view the larger picture of J-blogs.

Literature

This study will work within two strains of previous research: research into

journalists’ roles and routines, and the emergence of journalism blogs.

Journalists’ roles and routines

The way journalists conceptualize their jobs and how they go about doing them

has been often studied in an attempt to understand the influence and impact of the mass

media. Previous studies have showed that journalists’ perceptions of themselves and how

they do their jobs have an impact on the news product itself (Beam, Weaver & Brownlee,

2008; Fishman 1980; Tuchman, 1978; Tuchman 1973; Tuchman 1972).

Johnstone, Slawski & Bowman (1972) found two primary roles reporters play

within a newsroom culture: One being a neutral, impartial observer and the other being

an active participant whose point of view drives the reporting. Weaver & Wilhoit (1992),

in a survey of American journalists, found three different roles for journalists:

disseminators of information; interpreters of events; and adversaries of business and

government. A later study found a fourth role – a mobilizer of audience members (Beam,

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Weaver & Brownlee, 2008). That fourth conceptualization of journalists’ roles is tied to

the changes the internet has brought to newsrooms.

Perhaps the most important journalism ideal that emerged in the 20th century is

that of objectivity. (Berkman & Shumway, 2003; Soloski, 1989; Tuchman, 1972). In

some circles, it is considered the most important professional norm in journalism (Soloski

1989). Soloski (1989) defined journalistic objectivity as the ability to seek and report

themes fairly and in as balanced a way as possible.

Routines have also been shown to be important to the production and

dissemination of news (Fishman, 1980, Tuchman 1973). The nightly deadline (or

deadlines for big-city papers that print multiple editions) is important for financial

reasons, and the newspaper journalist’s day is structured as a push to that end-of-day

deadline (Tuchman, 1973). One important routine of newspapers is the beat system, in

which reporters are assigned to cover the same group regularly. The beat system was

created “to routinize the gathering of news” (Becker, Lowery, Claussen & Anderson,

2000, p. 12). Weaver and Wilhoit (1991) found that a majority of newspaper reporters

had beats, and that the most frequent beats were government and sports. Wilstein (2002)

calls beat writers “the backbone of every sports staff” (p. 11), and notes that their lives

are defined by their teams’ schedules. Game day coverage is the heart of sports beat

writing (Wilstein, 2002).

The rise of online news has raised questions about the place of traditional

journalism roles and routines within newer media. Concerns have been raised that the

speed of online news could hurt journalists’ accuracy (Berkman & Shumway, 2003).

Another concern involves the notion that the increased amount of raw information

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available on the internet has lessened the public’s reliance on the media - in the sports

world, teams are providing game statistics, quotes from players and coaches and video on

their official websites (Weintraub, 2007).

Journalism blogs and blogging

A blog – the common shorthand for web-log – has been defined as a “frequently

updated opinion journal.” (Singer, 2005, p. 173). Blogs have been a staple of online

communication since the internet emerged as a mass medium in the mid-1990s. At first,

blogs were conceptualized as a means for non-media members to express their opinions

and discuss the issues they care deeply about (Wall, 2004). In the first decade of the 21st

century, newspapers began adding blogs to their online editions. By 2008, one study

showed that 70 percent of newspapers featured staff-written blogs as part of their online

editions, and one-third of those newspapers had 10 or more staff blogs (Pew, 2008).

Blogging has traditionally been defined as highly personal and opinionated

writing (Robinson, 2006). That view can be seen as antithetical to the established

journalistic role of objectivity. Newspapers have, in practice, molded the nature of blogs

to fit into the traditional practices and culture of modern journalism by relying on

traditional newswriting structure and values like objectivity (Deuze, 2003; Singer, 2005).

J-blogs have also developed into conversations between reporters and readers (Bradshaw,

2008; Robinson, 2006; Singer, 2006; Singer, 2005; Weintraub, 2007).

J-blogs are also having an impact in the media’s role as a gatekeeper and agenda

setter. Media gatekeeping is the process by which media professionals select the stories

that are published in the newspaper or shown in a news broadcast (Shoemaker, 1996;

White, 1950). Agenda-setting is the media’s ability to influence what topics/subjects

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make it onto the public agenda – in other words, what stories/people get covered and

discussed (McCombs & Reynolds, 2009). The availability of information on the Internet

and the audience’s ability to steer reporters to such information (via blog comments)

could have profound implications in the media’s role as gatekeeper and agenda-setter

(Singer, 2006). Also, J-blogs are also often used as places for information that, for one

reason or another, didn’t fit into a traditional news story (Bradshaw, 2008; Robinson,

2006), a practice that raises potential questions about the media’s gatekeeping and

agenda-setting role.

There is no consensus within the newspaper industry about the benefits and

effects of blogging. Some studies have shown that journalists who blog have seen little

change in their work (Shultz & Sheffer, 2007), and others show that their work has been

changed dramatically by blogging (Bradshaw, 2008). Other studies view the relative

short length of blog entries as a positive, bringing tighter writing to the industry

(Bradshaw, 2008), while others see it as a negative, sacrificing depth for brevity (Poole,

2009). The constant connection with the audience has been viewed as a positive, a

constant give-and-take that transforms their relationships with readers (Bradshaw, 2008)

or as a negative that hurts journalism ethics (Leigh, 2008). This can partly be explained

by attitudes toward convergence in newsrooms, where a journalist’s identity is often tied

strongly to format he or she works in. (Singer, 2004).

The formats of J-blogs have evolved over the last 10-15 years. Robinson (2006)

performed a textual analysis of 130 J-blogs and found seven different forms that they

took:

A reporter’s notebook of news tidbits and incidentals; a straight column of opinion for the Web; a question-and-answer format by editors; a

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readership forum; a confessional diary written by the reporter about his or her beat; a round-up of news summaries that promote the print publication; and a rumor-mill blog that the reporter uses as an off-the-record account. (p. 70)

Shultz & Sheffer’s 2007 survey of sports journalists who blog as a part of their

job found that reporters who blogged did not perceive there to be much of a change to

their professional roles or much of an impact in their relationship to the audience. The

data showed that reporters did not take extra time out of their day to compose their blogs

but that some perceived that they were being asked to do more work without being paid.

Overall, Shultz & Sheffer found that there was a negative attitude toward blogging by

sports reporters – including active resistance among older reporters. Many of these views

have been echoed in the trade press, in which reporters have indicated that blogging

forces them to react to news instead of pursuing bigger, more issue-oriented stories

(Poole, 2009).

This study will use qualitative methods to examine, in greater detail, how sports

journalists blog. It will examine the day-to-day blogging routines of sports journalists and

examine how blogging has become a part of their job. It will expand on the findings of

Schultz & Sheffer’s 2007 quantitative study, taking their survey data and using it to help

design a qualitative study. This study will be guided by the following research questions:

RQ 1: How do sports journalists feel blogging has changed their role as a

journalist?

RQ 2: How do sports journalists feel blogging has changed their work routines?

Method

This study was accomplished by a series of in-depth interviews with sports

journalists. Past research in this area has included surveys (Schultz & Sheffer, 2007),

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institutional ethnography (Hatcher, 2009) and textual analysis (Bradshaw, 2008) but not

solely in-depth interviews. Kvale (1996) wrote that “the qualitative research interview

attempts to understand the world from the subjects points of view, to unfold the meaning

of their experiences” (p. 1). Using in-depth interviews will allow this study to go beyond

the data of previous survey research and gain a better understanding of how reporters feel

their roles and routines are being affected by blogging.

Eight interviews were conducted in March and April of 2010. Purposive sampling

was used to find sports beat reporters for daily newspapers who keep a blog as a part of

their day-to-day jobs. This was the focus rather than newspaper columnists who blog or

reporters who blog about off-beat topics. Blogs have been defined as “a new form of

journalism” (Robinson, 2008, p. 80), and the focus of this study is blog-journalism, rather

than strictly opinion blogs. In journalistic terms, this equates to reporters, not columnists.

There was also partial use of snowball sampling, as participants were free to suggest

other reporters they knew who might be willing to take part in this study. In addition,

there were elements of a convenience sample. All of the reporters who participated had

some connection to the Northeastern United States. Participants were guaranteed

anonymity in exchange for their participation. They will not be identified in this study by

their name, their newspaper affiliation or the beat they cover. This was done to encourage

candor among the participants Participants signed content forms at the in-person

interviews or gave oral consent for the phone interviews.

Two of the interviews were done in person. Six were done over the phone. The

interviews ranged from 41 minutes to 61 minutes in length. All interviews were recorded

on a digital recorder and transcribed by the researcher. The interviews were semi-

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structured in nature, which allowed for more flexibility and freedom to while relying on a

set of predetermined questions (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006). An interview guide was

developed and used for each interview. After answering demographic questions,

participants were asked descriptive questions about the process of blogging, questions

asking them to conceptualize their roles as journalists, and open-ended questions about

the perceived changes to their jobs brought about by blogging. No incentives were

offered for participation, but all eight freely volunteered their time. Through the use of

reflexive memos, as well as some line-by-line coding, the researcher culled themes after

each transcription.

The researcher’s role in this study is that of an insider (Hesse-Biber & Leavy,

2006). The researcher spent 10 years as newspaper sports journalist and kept a blog as a

part of his job for four years. That professional experience translates to personal

knowledge of the newspaper industry’s traditions and practices, as well as of reporters’

roles and routines. The researcher also has personal and professional relationships with

sports journalists who blog, which increased access opportunities to potential

participants.

Findings

The reporters’ professional experience ranged from eight to 29 years. They were a cross

section of newspaper sizes, from small-town dailies to major metropolitan news

organizations. They covered a variety of beats – writers who covered the NFL, the NHL,

Major League Baseball, minor league baseball and hockey and major college football and

basketball took part in the study. (See Appendix 1. Note, to protect the confidentiality

promised to reporters, the circulation size of their respective newspapers is not listed).

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In general, the sports reporters interviewed had a positive view of blogging,

although that view is often a nuanced one. Blogs are used in a variety of different ways,

mostly for breaking news items. Blogging has resulted in an increased relationship with

their readers, which is viewed as a positive. However, blogging is still done within a

hierarchy of print news. The journalists’ print work is still often viewed as the most

important aspect of their jobs, and there is a tug-of-war between the print work and blog

work.

Conceptualization and utilization

Virtually all of the reporters interviewed said that editors at their newspapers

conceptualized their blogs. The blogs mostly started between 2005 and 2007, meaning

they were between three and five years old at the time of this study. Each blog is

conceptualized differently, often depending on the newspaper’s coverage philosophy. A

newspaper that takes a big-picture attitude toward sports will view its blog as a place for

analysis and off-beat material, while one that focuses on breaking news will

conceptualize its blog as a place for constant updates. Nonetheless some similarities did

emerge in examining how reporters use their blogs. The uses were consistent with, if not

identical to, the categories of posts found by Robinson (2008) in a textual analysis of J-

blogs.

One of the primary categories of blog posts is breaking news. The reporters

interviewed noted that it was a priority of theirs to update their blog with news as quickly

as possible. One reporter said:

“We have conditioned ourselves anytime we hear news, the first thing you always thought of (in the past) is ‘OK, I’ll get a story done in the paper tomorrow. So, we’ve completely reconditioned our minds and our process

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to, we can get a story done on it in the next five minutes. And that process usually includes the blog.” Pre- and post-game blog posts are also a function of sports reporters’ blogs,

reflecting the notion of game day being the heart of a beat writer’s job (Wilstein, 2002).

Pre-game blogs contain information pertaining to that day’s game and can come from

pre-game interviews with players and coaches, interviews done before game day, leftover

notes from the previous game, or an aggregation of links to other stories about the

upcoming game. The reporters will typically update their blog with each game’s starting

lineup and any game-related news (i.e., injury updates). Post-game blogs are usually

posted after the reporter files the game story for the print edition. One reporter described

his routine:

“If there’s breaking news that comes out of the post-game interviews, I’ll usually throw that up on its own separate blog right way, just to get that news up there. I usually do one long notebook style post-game wrap that covers all the angles and little tidbits and observations that didn’t make the game story, or that I thought made the game story but that I’d like to discuss further.”

Opinion, typically in the form of analysis pieces, is another emerging category of

blog post. The reporters write about an event and provide “informed opinion,” in the

words of one reporter. The reporters conceptualize this differently than a column, which

is all opinion. “It’s sort of a cross between, like, a column and a story … it’s like a

strongly worded story. You have to write it with a lot of authority,” is how one reporter

described it. These were not popular among the reporters interviewed, and some reporters

expressed concerns about crossing the traditional lines of objectivity (Soloski, 1989).

Live in-game blogs, which feature some sort of interactive element with readers,

are sometimes kept. However, the reporters almost universally dislike this type of

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blogging because it takes their attention away from the game. “I routinely miss things

cause I’m typing (the in-game blog), and I hear the noise of the crowd and I have to

watch a replay,” said one reporter. Some of the reporters whose newspaper had a live in-

game blog noted that at least some in-game blogging was done by another staff member,

freeing the beat writer up at least somewhat to watch the game. Taken collectively, the

breaking news, pre- and post-game notes, live-game updates and analysis pieces reflect

the journalistic roles of disseminator and interpreter (Weaver & Wilhoit, 1992).

An additional category is one that can be termed fun stuff. These are light-hearted

posts aimed not at the dissemination of news but rather deal the off-beat aspects of sports,

or the melding sports and popular culture. “There’s a lot of goofy conversation that goes

on on the press table, just wisecracks and things, and some of those will make it into the

blog,” one reporter said. Examples of this include funny interviews with players, either in

text or in video format, or flip-camera videos and pictures of off-beat items the reporter

finds fun and interesting. That speaks to another point, that the blogs are not simply

collections of text. The reporters noted that they have been trained in using cell-phone

cameras and digital recorders and often post audio, video and pictures – both in game

coverage and for off-beat, fun stuff.

Some reporters view their blog almost as mini wire service, a way to quickly

disseminate news and information to fans. “What do they say, journalism is the first draft

of history? Well, then the blog is the first draft of journalism,” one reporter said. These

reporters view the blog as something almost cold and sterile, the straight nuts and bolts,

just-the-facts style. Their focus, their pride, was the story they wrote in the daily paper.

One reporter described his attitude like this:

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“The things I got into this business for … the writing, I like words, I like to play around with words. That part of it part of it, I don’t think, is part of the internet. Again, it’s more of just keep churning it out, get it out as quickly as possible, whereas the newspaper version … I feel like I can play around with it more, try to, in my own feeble way, try to come up with the right phrase.”

Other reporters view the blog more personally, conceptualizing their print stories

as their work product while the blog was more their own. One reporter said:

“I guess I’ve got a bigger personal investment on the blog, because my name’s on there, my picture’s on the top of it, my name’s in the title of it. I really feel like it’s my little corner of the website and the newspaper. You take more ownership of it maybe than you do on a 12-inch game story that’s gonna get buried on page 5-B.”

Another reporter said that he was “bored” with his beat job and used his blog as a

creative outlet and used that to gain exposure for himself, which eventually allowed him

to get a new job. “It helped me personally, you know, from a recognition standpoint and a

knowing people, meeting people standpoint,” he said. Two veteran reporters noted that

blogging is extra work without extra pay. However, they balance any frustration over that

fact with the knowledge that learning this skill was, in their eyes, helping their career.

One said, “I figure, you know what, rather than complain about having to do all this, I

just try to, you know, remind myself, it’s just making me more valuable.”

The emergence of Twitter, with its 140-character limit and instant delivery, has

already had a profound impact on blogging sports reporters. Reporters have started using

Twitter to deliver breaking news items and in-game updates, to use two examples. This,

in a way, is making the blog almost a middle step between the immediacy of Twitter and

the longer form of the traditional story – if it’s not eliminating many of the traditional

uses of a blog. “Twitter has completely changed the game,” one reporter said. “I don’t

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know if I would have actually had a blog or put as much into the blog as I did if Twitter

was around.”

Taken collectively, the conceptualization and utilization of the blog by the

reporters interviewed shows that keeping a blog is now an integral, ingrained part of

covering a beat. “They’re like a baseline right now. If you don’t do it, you’re really in

trouble. It’s like, uh, a necessary thing. It’s like having a beat writer … it’s part of the

furniture now.”

Relationship of print and blog

Although blogs have become an ingrained and integral part of sports beat

coverage, there still exists tension between keeping a blog and covering a team for the

newspaper’s print edition. In a sense, there’s a tug-of-war between the blog and the print

coverage. The reporters believe that blogging is an important part of their jobs, but it is

done within the traditional print framework.

For example, the reporters’ work day remains structured not just around the game

schedule but around the traditional print deadline. Deadlines vary from paper to paper,

but they are typically anywhere from 10:15 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Much of the reporters’

blogging – be it game-day coverage or off-day stories – is done within that traditional

print framework. Many of the participants noted that they posted a game’s final score to

the blog immediately upon the game’s conclusion, but that they do not write anything for

the blog until after they file their print-edition story – with the exception of a short update

if there is breaking post-game news. “After the game … come right back up (from the

locker room interviews) and usually have, you know, an hour to write my story. Um,

once the story’s done, then I’ll move onto the blog,” one reporter said. Another noted

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that, after a close game, a post-game blog post with the final score may have received

more than 100 comments by the time he returns to his computer following interviews. He

waits to look at those because, as he said, “I still gotta work. I’ve still got to write a story

and a notebook,” insinuating that the print story is the real work, as opposed to things that

appear on the blog. This reflects the traditional push toward deadline of daily newspaper

journalism (Tuchman 1973).

Of note is what was not said in any of the interviews. None of the beat reporters

noted any difference in the way they reported stories for the blog vs. the way they do for

print. What is considered a credible source and a credible story for print is the same as

what’s considered credible for a blog. “I think the standards of what makes something,

you know, usable and trustworthy, I think it’s the same,” one reporter said.

Many of the reporters also stated that their print stories mattered more to them

than their blog entries. Several noted their belief and understanding that newspapers still

make a majority of their money off the print edition, making that more important than the

online edition.

“The blog, the best post there gets, you know, a thousand reads. So it’s still, I mean, it’s just kind of basic facts. You know, if this is so important, do you want it going where a thousand people are going to read it or do you want it going where 50,000 people are gonna read it … I think the daily paper remains the priority … at the end of the day, you know, so much more of people’s time and so much more of people’s resources still go into the daily paper.”

Other reporters also noted that they took more pride in their print stories than their

blogs. “I’m old school,” one noted. “My game story will be held up against other game

stories … but that’s the writer’s mentality.”

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The conceptualization of a blog also reflects the hierarchy of print. Most of the

reporters noted that they used their blogs either as a first draft of their print stories or

using notes and quotes that did not make the printed edition, either because of space

concerns or because they weren’t deemed newsworthy enough for print. This is

reminiscent of what Bradshaw (2008) and Robinson (2006) found in their studies. With

some exceptions (notably the fun blog entries), there isn’t a great deal of original, blog-

only reporting done. Nearly all of the information gathered for the blog is done as a part

of the work for print stories. One reporter said his blog was partially conceptualized using

a movie analogy:

“When we first created the blog, we said we wanted to make this kind of the … if you were a real big fan of a movie and bought the DVD, you’d be excited to see the extra features on a DVD – the director’s cut, the deleted scenes and so forth. And so we wanted to make the blog kind of the extra features to go along with what we were doing in the paper and the online stories. It was kind of like different things that you weren’t getting elsewhere.”

Even reporters who take a lot of personal and professional pride in their blog do

so within the hierarchy of print. One example is a reporter who generated a series of blog

posts by asking players seemingly odd questions. The answers often made for an fun, off-

beat posts. But ultimately, he viewed it the prism of the traditional print story. “That’s

kind of the favorite part of what I’ve done, because it puts the athlete in a different setting

where I might get different answers for an actual story I write,” he said.

An interesting dynamic that arises on beats where there is strong competition

between newspapers is the question of posting breaking news online and in the blog.

Once a story is posted online, it can either be quoted or confirmed by competitors. A few

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reporters noted that this goes against the traditional prize of having a scoop in the

morning paper. One reporter noted:

“I think a lot of newspapers now just tell people, whether it’s the right or wrong thing, if you have something just put it up right away and basically screw the next day’s paper … I mean, you’re basically conceding everything in the next day’s paper.”

Blogging has also increased the reporters’ workload. One reporter interviewed

estimated that, on a game day, he writes 6,000 words between the blog and the print

edition. Along with the traditional game coverage, reporters are writing pre-game blog

posts, post-game blog posts and often doing multimedia offerings like audio and video.

“We’ve still gotta produce all of our stuff for print,” one reporter said. “This is extra work

that literally, literally did not exist until 2007.” Every reporter said that having a blog has

made the job of a beat writer more of a 24/7 job. One compared himself to a doctor in

that he’s never far from his cell phone. Another said, “I think you’re much more on your

toes because, in theory, you could be writing something that the public’s gonna see in the

next five minutes … so you’re always on call for the next five minutes.”

But there is a real tension for reporters in terms of balancing time spent blogging

and time spent on print stories. On the one hand, the blogs’ freedom in terms of time,

space and subjects is attractive. “I feel like some days that I can blog all day long and still

have stuff to put up there,” one reporter said. “You could spend a lot of time really

crafting good stuff for the web, but there’s just a limited amount of time in your day.” On

the other hand, time spent blogging is time that can’t be spent doing explanatory or

investigative stories. One reporter noted that, in the past year, he wrote a lengthy feature

story. In the pre-internet days, the story would have taken him one week. With his

internet work, it took him two weeks, fitting in a call here, some writing time there

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because he had to do it around his daily blog duties. “Those kinds of stories are fewer and

father between,” he said. That’s reminiscent of the findings of Poole (2009).

This notion of print hierarchy in a digital world creates a tension for beat writers.

There is a push and pull of trying to maintain a blog that is creative, informative and

serve its readers while still writing and reporting stories for a daily print edition. One

common frustration is the notion of repetition, of writing basically the same information

on the blog and again later for print. “Basically you’re working for an internet company

and a newspaper company,” one reporter said.

Relationships with readers

All eight participants noted that since they started blogging, their interaction with

readers had dramatically increased - whether it was via e-mail or by comments on blog

posts. A majority of the participants viewed this as a positive development. In fact, this

was overwhelmingly seen as the best aspect about blogging, echoing some previous

findings (Bradshaw, 2008). One reporter said:

“It’s definitely tied me more closely in to the readers. To the point where, when they see me at the games, rarely do they say ‘Oh, I loved the article Thursday,’ it’s more now like ‘I love your blog, I read your blog every day.’”

Before the internet, there was minimal interaction between reporters and readers.

A reader’s main outlet to express his or her opinion was writing a letter to the editor.

With blogs, readers are able to ask questions of the beat writers and express their

opinions as soon as an item is posted. “After a loss or something like that, I’ll get back (to

my computer) and within 30 minutes there will be 100 comments,” one reporter said of

his posting of the game’s final score.

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Reporters’ interaction with readers has humanized both. Reporters become, to

readers, more than just a byline in the newspaper. They become somebody who has

answered their e-mails, with whom they’ve had a conversation online. And the readers

become a source of information to the reporters. By keeping up with comments and

responding to readers, the reporters are able to get a sense of what concepts the readers

feel are important. In the words of one reporter:

“I think that, for too long, too much of journalism has been like, you know, peering down the mountain. And the people that read this stuff all have opinions on it, too. We just have a different level of access to what they want to know about.”

The expectations have changed within this relationship, too. Reporters said that

readers expect constant updates. One reporter noted that readers will ask questions during

a game and expect answers. All of this speaks to the notion of both Deuze (2003) and

Weintraub (2007) of how blogs have changed the dynamic of the journalist-reader

interaction. The traditional unidirectional model of newspaper reporting has evolved to

more of a loop, with constant interaction between reporters and readers.

However, the relationship still reflects the hierarchy of print. One of the main

benefits of this increased interaction, the reporters believe, is that it may make the readers

more likely to become paying customers of the paper. One reporter said:

“The bottom line is, all this stuff we can do, all this blog and video and Twitter and all this stuff, I still need you to get a seven-day home subscription, or three-to-five day home subscription or spend 75 cents in the morning, or I don’t have a job. So if they feel they have more of a personal relationship with me and want to read what I say in the paper because I’ve responded to their E-mail or commented on the blog with them, then that’s a good thing.”

Conclusion

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Blogging has had an effect on the way sports reporters perceive their roles and

routines. It has revolutionized the way they interact with readers. It has affected how they

report breaking news, emphasizing speed and continuous story updates rather than the

traditional morning scoop. There is still a tug-of-war between the traditions and customs

of print and the utility and popularity of the blog. Blogs are still something that are

written and conceptualized within a hierarchy of the printed product.

This research served as a pilot study for further study into how journalists’

routines are being impacted by convergence within newsrooms. This study’s findings are

being used to inform a qualitative study of news reporters, which is using in-depth

interviews to examine these reporters’ routines in the early 21st century.

Even within the hierarchy of print, blogging is an integral part of a sports beat

writer’s job. It is as much a part of the job as covering games and hitting deadlines. In the

words of one reporter, “Blogs aren’t a new thing, they are instrumental part of what we

do now and they should be looked at as such instead of this, like, this new novel toy.”

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Appendix 1

Reporter Years of experience Sports covered

Reporter 1 10 years Minor-league hockey

Reporter 2 15 years Major League Baseball

Reporter 3 22 years College basketball

Reporter 4 13 years College baskeball, hockey

Reporter 5 25 years Pro baseball, hockey

Reporter 6 8 years College football, basketball

Reporter 7 29 years College basketball

Reporter 8 10 years Pro football, tennis

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The first draft of journalism: How blogging as affected sports journalists' roles and routines

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