MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch will be joining us in class Tuesday afternoon. Along with Derrick Goold, who is visiting on Thursday and will be the subject of my next post, she should be able to give us an inside look at beat reporting.
Here’s some samples of her work for you to check out in advance of her visit…
Features:
Josh Hamilton finds redemption
News:
Wife of Pirates’ prospect accused of kidnapping
Game Stories:
Sports Journalism 
I was pleasantly surprised to see MLB.com acknowledging the shortcomings of its officiating in the Pirates loss story. I’m sure we’ll talk with Ms. Langosch quite a bit about this idea, but I would have thought a writer for the official league website might have to be less critical of the league and its umpiring crews. Still, I remember that game quite clearly and there’s really no other way to spin it; that call marred an otherwise great baseball game.
The other story that interested me most was the Joplin feature. Having visited Joplin in the months following the tornado, it truly is something you have to see to believe, which is why comprehensive description is pivotal in sharing this story. I really appreciate how Ms. Langosch “drove” or “walked” the reader through Joplin; the turn-by-turn approach to the setting is an effective way of helping the reader understand the destruction; it is baffling to drive down one street and see untouched storefronts before making a left turn that brings nothing but wreckage and the early stages of rebuilding.
I think Greg has mentioned in class the biggest point of contention most people have of MLB.com basically covering themselves is the conflict of interest. While, Major League Baseball could conceivably be able to prevent MLB.com writers from doing features over things like steroids that they don’t want covered.
When it comes to game stories I don’t think there should be any real surprise that Langosh and the Atlanta Braves writer Mark Bowman both focused largely on the blown call in the 19th inning of the Pirates-Braves game. In this day and age, the only thing worse than criticizing your own product is pretending something like this didn’t happen, because somebody else will pick up on it and suddenly MLB.com, and unfortunately all of its writers, loses all credibility.
In my opinion, this perception of conflict of interest would have been a much bigger issue in the pre-Internet and pre-cable tv era. If Major League Baseball had been covering its own games and then sending the stories to newspapers across the country (basically doing the job of the AP), then I would have found it inappropriate.
During my time as a beat reporter for the Missourian, I remember Greg always wanting us to write stories about games that weren’t “typical game stories”. It is very interesting that a writer for MLB.com would focus her story on the shortcomings of the umpires, but her job as a reporter is to showcase the most influential aspect of the game. That aspect was obviously the blown call. I also feel that Langosch did a good job of breaking down the play, covering it from every angle and gathering quotes from players, coaches as well as the umpire to give complete context to the blown call.
The Hamilton piece was interesting because I think everyone kind of knows his story but Langosch did a great job of diagramming the sluggers downward spiral. Langosch’s prose is very clear and it gives you the facts and analysis in a very systematic way that is easy to follow. I am looking forward to asking her questions about how she outlines her feature stories.
I thought the Hamilton piece was very good. We have debated in class as to whether or not MLB.com leans more towards the PR side of journalism, but I think this story could easily have been written for any type of sports publication, whether that be a newspaper or a sports website such as ESPN. Langosch goes in to great detail, providing a lot of context for the story. I liked her lede, which tied nicely to her ending.
I think this story could be improved if there were more scenes to show rather than tell. For example, instead of telling me Hamilton receives support, shown through the Rangers celebrating with ginger ale, I would have liked Langosch to use her access to show me that experience. A lot of these great descriptions in my opinion (such as, “People write him inspirational letters and he writes them back”) would be terrific scenes to portray, and would relay the same message but with a larger impact.
Solid story.
I liked the Hamilton story because I think it does something that Wright talked about on Thursday. It incorporates scenes to illustrate a larger point: Hamilton’s winding road to recovery and his shortcomings along the way. Wright emphasized how he uses scenes, scenes, scenes in his writing and that’s the key to good feature writing. There are a couple of scenes that stick out to me in this story, such as when a desparate 22-year-old Hamillton shows up at the Chadwicks in Raleigh, N.C. Ms. Langosch is using this scene to show how Hamilton has leaned on others throughout his recovery but also has the tendency to hurt those people who love him the most, namely his wife, Katie.
I also think Langosch presents enough context to make this story work. Hamilton’s story isn’t something new to MLB.com’s specific audience. But, the reader still needs to understand his path through recovery.
I wonder, though, whether or not specific tattoos have different meanings for him. Toward the beginning of the story, she writes “he wants you to see each of his 26 tattoos, which, once a piercing reality of his downward spiral, now serve as a permanent reminder of how far he has climbed.” I’ve heard in other interviews that Hamilton was embarrassed by a lot of the tattoos on his arms and why he got them. So, I’m interested if he ever talked about this when she interviewed him.
Finally, I think the lead and the ending work in tandem. It seems like Hamilton needed to be open and honest to himself and others about his imperfections to overcome them. But, just like with the Urban Meyer story, the reader is left to wonder: Has Hamilton fully recovered? Can he escape his past? Hamilton had a well-known relapse last offseason so we’re left to wonder if he has been able to overcome his daemons.
I found the Cardinals Game 7 story interesting because it wasn’t written like an elimination story. Without the sentences about it being the end of their season, I don’t think it would be so obvious. I think often times beat writers get wrapped up in capturing the sadness of the atmosphere, but in this story, Langosch strays from that and keeps it newsy. I like that this story isn’t laced in stats because they probably wouldn’t add much to the fact that the Giants eliminated the Cardinals. Not to mention, the fans reading this story probably watched the game or at the very least read the box score above the article; however, there is a section of game summary for the readers who are only reading this article to find out what happened.
The other story I read was about the Pirate’s wife kidnapping the baby. I thought it was interesting because it was a negative situation related to a player, but the more I read, the more I noticed Tabata’s quotes separated him from the blame. In any legal situation like this, readers want to know what happened and what the player has to say about it. I think Langosch did a good job answering both of those. It also stuck out that this was written about a minor league player, who the average fan may not know of, but then Jenifer explained that when covering a team like the Pirates, there is more attention on prospects.
Although the two games stories had fairly obvious news pegs with the botched call in Atlanta and the season-ending loss in San Francisco, credit Jenifer (not that she needs it) for sticking to those pegs and not dwelling on less-important details of the game. This strategy, of course, is what makes regular season games with no real direction or importance difficult to write about. But usually games have some sort of moment where one team capitalizes and ends up taking the match. I think it’s important to drill down on that moment, get player and coach reaction to it, and run with it. I think there’s a clearer path to a successful story, and suddenly, there’s no need to worry about all the different details of the game that end up giving a writer a headache rather than good paragraphs. Because these moments are all unique, game stories are easier to differentiate from one day to the next, too. Although this maybe seems pretty straightforward, I need to do a better job of thinking about it when covering games and dealing with the pressures of deadlines.