Let’s talk about this one: a soccer team near Barcelona that has never won, or scored.
What do you think of the treatment? I’m looking at you, broadcast students.
And let’s talk about storytelling, print vs. video. Could this work as a print story? How?
What does the video storytelling bring that print couldn’t?
Sports Journalism 
An absolutely beautiful story.
I’d love to say I could find a way to make that work just as well in print, but I’d be lying. So would any other writer. There’s something about hearing a child tell a story in his or her own words that just can’t translate to print in the same way. We can try, but any description we can write will come off as cliche. Seeing a kid with a cowlick and two missing front teeth explain with a smile on his face how they always lose is just special.
It would also be difficult to replicate the effect the music provides. Even most broadcast stories wouldn’t use a technique like that (and I’m not sure I’d call this “journalism” because of it), but it gives the story a cinematic, emotional quality that’s difficult to accomplish in the pages of a newspaper or magazine.
The text at the end is another technique that’s difficult to replicate in print. You can tack that information on at the end, but the effect just isn’t the same. I don’t know why it is, but I feel like you can get away with that in video and it’s perfectly satisfying, but in print it just doesn’t work.
This story could work in print, it would just be different. You might not be able capture everything the video captures as easily, but the quotes are funny enough. A couple of pictures would help give more appeal to a print story, but description could make it just as moving. You could describe the way the goalkeeper helplessly dives after balls. You could describe the crowd reaction as the team comes “close” to scoring for one of the few times on the season.
Also, with print, you could talk to people about how they scored a goal and get their account of it even if you were not there. With the video, they couldn’t really do anything with it because they didn’t have footage.
The music in the video really added to the story. That is one thing that print can’t do.
I think that print, broadcast and photography each have unique features that make some stories impossible to properly translate to the other mediums. Seeing and hearing those kids directly is what makes this story so great. Yes you can describe them and include the quotes, but like Jesse said, it just wouldn’t be the same. Also, since having so many kids speak got confusing at times of remembering who was who in the video, I think it would be harder to keep reading the names next to a quote, then going back to the pictures to see which kid it was and keep track of the kids in print.
My main problem with this video is that the videographer wasn’t there to see the goal. Seeing the team finally score a goal and celebrate would have really been the best conclusion for this story. I understand that is may not be the most interesting task to sit and film poorly-played youth soccer games, but it is part of the journalist’s job to get the complete story. So I can’t help but wonder why he or she wasn’t there.
There are plenty of occasions where a print story provides a lot more depth than a broadcast story could. Oftentimes news reports about a subject only scratch the surface in terms of the detail that a written expose can reveal. With the story of “The Little Team” in mind, print could offer a different take on it that could be quite effective.
Like Jesse said, seeing the children and hearing their voices is part of what makes the story special and heartfelt, and print simply can’t match that. The excitement in the boy’s voice when he says he would “fly” if he were to score a goal is something that print couldn’t do justice for.
Still, I think a print story could be effective in different ways. We’ve talked a lot in this class about the power of descriptive writing, and how words can bring images to life. Well, it’s certainly possible to describe a few of the children, and maybe even delve into some detail about their backgrounds. It would probably be best to limit the number of players that the story focuses on, but a writer could delve into more detail on their lives in order to provide a deeper context.
In a text story, the narrative could also answer some of the questions left unanswered by the video. We could find out, for example, why the team’s opposition is so far superior. Were they placed in the wrong league? Did one of the parents draft a poor team?
Sure, video might be the ideal medium in terms of appealing to emotion, but print could add more depth to the story in terms of information. The right balance of descriptive and informative writing could make for an effective print story.
No. This story cannot be told effectively in print. I loved this video. I thought it was great, but there are two major problems with this story being told through a print medium. The first is that the writer would simply have too much ownership of what objectively is not a very interesting story. And because of that, it would be nearly impossible for this kind of story not to come off as cliche. These kids lose a lot but they don’t care; they just play for fun. BORING. I don’t care about that. I’ve read that story 1000 times. Hell, I’ve lived that story. We all played on teams with that mentality when we were kids. And having to explain why they lose. It’s because they’re kids, and they’re not that good at soccer. There. Done. End of analysis. Alex said print has the ability to provide more depth. OK. I’m not sure I agree, but even if that is true, it is certainly not needed in this story. There is no depth required in this story.
And that brings me to the other significant problem with story being told in print. The heart of this story, as my classmates have said, are the kids themselves. Without them, this story goes nowhere. You have see and hear them for this to be at all effective. Those interviews on paper are not nearly as adorable or hilarious without each of the kids cute faces on screen. Jesse is correct when he says that any writer who says they could tell this story as effectively or more effectively in print is lying.
I think it’s crazy to say this story wouldn’t work in print, just because I’d hesitate to say that any story can’t be told. You just need to find the right way to tell it.
This is not a story you’ve read 1,000 times. How many times have you seen a team surrender 200-something goals while only scoring one? I get that it’s a cliche, but it’s also remarkable. And I think observation can create this scene as well. The kids are cute, and it’s cute to see them in video form. But if we were to make this truly multimedia – perhaps using text to give a fuller background about each kid, photos to paint the scene or the town and video to accompany it – I still think it would be a richer story.
Text shouldn’t be used sometimes, it’s true. This story shouldn’t be straight text, 2,000 words explaining in monotonous detail what it feels like to lose a soccer game by 12 goals. But could it not be used to add depth or context? I think so. I guess what I’m saying is there’s a place, and a use for all forms of journalism, and while this story may not be totally suited for print I think the work of a really effective writer could improve it. Maybe we, as writers, just need to think outside the box and figure out what would really work.
Mike, I understand what you’re saying, but where I think where we’re disagreeing is how we’re choosing to answer the question Greg asked us which is could this particular story be told in print? I’m saying no because sure, as writers we could investigate the players’ backgrounds and all that and write an effective feature, but that’s not what we were asked. We are asked if we could do this story. Doing intense background research on these kids defeats the humorous purpose of this short story. It’s not about individual players. It’s about a team that loses a lot. And that’s funny. If this were a serious story, then it would call for some investigation into the background of the team or the parents, or the town, but its not. It’s a short, funny story that clearly best told in video form. Kids ALWAYS work better in photo and film. Can they be effective in print? Yes. But it’s generally much better idea for a journalists to put a face on a kid as often as possible.
As for the story being remarkable. I think it’s the exact opposite. I think this story is so effective because it so spectacularly unremarkable. No one cares about stats in recreation league soccer, especially with kids. If this were a professorial team, those stats would matter, but it’s not and they don’t. The stats simply provide a little more depth to the fact this adorable little team is really bad at soccer. As Jesse said in class, this story matters to no one. It has no effect on anyone’s life but is still great because it’s light, cute and funny. Those qualities would be terribly difficult to convey in a print piece, and I just don’t think it would work nearly as well.
That all said, I get what you’re saying. The story told totally differently could be effective in print. But the answer to Greg’s question, could THIS story be told in print is no, it cannot.
I think this story would be very hard to effectively tell in print, simply because of how hard it is to interview kids. Kids don’t want to talk with journalists and have to answer a lot of questions. But, there’s something about video. When they are on camera, they seem to open up, almost like they are on stage. They are really the center of attention. In some ways, doing this story as a video is probably easier because you’re videotaping these kids’ reactions and facial expressions.
I think it would be much harder to do that in print, without is becoming monotonous or over the top. A writer simply can’t create the feeling of watching a video, in which these kids are totally okay with being a bad team. It’s hard to recreate those emotions in print and have the reader understand what you are trying to do. I’m not trying to say that it can’t be done. I’m just saying I don’t think it can be done effectively and convey the same feeling that the videographer did in this story.
Even though I said this story is probably easier to do in video form, that doesn’t mean that it’s not good or anything. What I like about this story is that there’s no connection with our class in Columbia, Missouri. And yet, this story works because we don’t have many stories like it.
We’ve talked a lot this semester about doing stories that are different and unique. I think Greg brought this up the other day: Sports writers always talk to the winning quarterback or the winning team or the winning coach. And, they don’t talk to those on the other side of the ledger. This story is unique because it’s about a BAD team. These kids don’t care, though. For them, it’s just about having fun and the joy of playing. We don’t get to talk about that a lot in sports.
Once again I want to say that this story CAN be told in print. It would just be a different experience for the audience. It is that way with any story, just like books turned into movies. Like I said earlier and Alex mentioned, there are some advantages to print that you can’t replicate in the video (like back story, what happened when they scored a goal).
It goes both ways. No, you can’t make the reader hear the music in the background or the voices of the children, but you can leave those things up to imagination. And as a writer, you can choose to emphasize certain details in the story that would make it funny or more interesting, like the goalie talking about the team as he is eating a stack of cookies.
I disagree with James, I think the stats in this story are significant. The scores of their games show how bad they are as a team. And I don’t think it’s remarkable that there is a team this bad in a children’s soccer league, but it’s still good for a story. People can relate and sympathize with these kids, and it’s funny to show how they go about trying to improve and what they see as the problem.
And again, in “Print”, there are still pictures, so you can give the reader faces to match the names.
It would be very interesting to see someone do a written version of this story so that they could be compared side by side. I think that this same story could be done in print but I don’t know if it would have the same emotional affect as the video did. The images of the young kids playing on a dirt field with their dying-for-braces smiles beaming, had such a powerful, heartwarming affect that I don’t know could be equally transferred into print. Seeing the kids themselves is what makes this story so compelling and simply describing them wouldn’t be as interesting. I like what James said about the story being so great because of how unremarkable it is. The video isn’t a spectacular achievement in journalism but it is great for being a cute story about kids who can’t seem to score a goal. I think that if you tried to do this story in print, the writer could have made the mistake of being bogged down in the details of the kids and the community in an effort to add more depth. The simplicity of the story is what makes this video so wonderful, I don’t think you could tell the same story in print by giving the reader the same information that they walk away from the video with.
There’s a reason why “a picture can say a thousand words.” Like it or not, people first see photographs in newspapers rather than words. Maybe it’s because there’s less thinking involved — you don’t have to imagine what someone looks like when you’re looking at a photo versus reading a description. It’s also quicker. We could watch the video in under 10 minutes, but a 1,000-word exposé would probably take longer if we really wanted to invest in the writing.
We as journalists see the growing importance of multimedia, both inside and outside the industry. And for good reason; the more mediums in which we can tell a story, the better. When I first thought about Greg’s question after watching the video, I agreed with Jim — without a doubt, the story works in video better than in print. But then I read Mike’s comment, and hedged my answer. I would still use the video as-is, because I think the interviews are priceless. You’re going to attract a bigger audience that will fall for the smiles and the unintentionally hilarious statements made by the kids. But maybe that audience will stay for, or even better, read before watching, an article that’s almost entirely composed of description. It need only require visiting one game. Nothing too long or exorbitant; just what the writer sees and hears — one kid kicking dirt, what’s said in the huddle, parents cheering for a futile effort, etc. I envision it as only a few hundred words, 500 at most. Indeed, this is why I agree that descriptive writing is such a valuable skill. As a writer, you can also draw people in. I still think there are times for hard ledes and straightforward grafs and quotes, but for seemingly “less important” stories such as these, it is entirely possible to bring them to life. That’s the art of good storytelling. That’s what journalism needs more of, because this world is full of winless teams and other “cliches.” We need to spend more time paying attention to what’s going on across the street than across the world (yes, knowing current events is good, too, but the local newspaper should own the neighborhood).
In every industry I’m aware of, diversity is a good thing. I’m not talking just people, but strategies and approaches, too. The sooner we stop thinking in solely print terms and the more we start thinking about how to tell a story through the best combination of visuals, audio and words, I think the better journalists we will become.
Jaws
The Godfather
Fight Club
Jurassic Park
Rita Hayworth and Shawkshank Redemption
I imagine those are Mike’s favorite novels. He probably appreciates the detailed backstory for the unsympathetic characters in Jaws, the longwinded, disjointed prose of Puzo’s Godfather, Palahniuk’s staccato insanity-in-print writing style or Crichton’s overwrought scientific explanations for how cloning dinosaurs from mosquitoes really might be possible. Come to think of it, Shawshank would be better without that damn Morgan Freeman constantly interrupting the story with his narration.
I realize that’s kind of an unfair attack on his position. Believing a story could be told more effectively in print is not the same as saying every story always is more effectively told in print. But I do think these films (yes, fiction, I know) highlight what I believe is true — sometimes print simply cannot do a story justice.
There is no possible way to capture in print the sheer awesomeness of seeing a T-rex rip a car to shreds as the children inside scream in terror or the suspense of the fin propelling toward a swimmer and the “duh duh” sounding its approach. No writer can bring the Corleones to life like Pacino, Brando and De Niro. And just one Morgan Freeman voiceover is worth several hundred pages of description.
Likewise, there’s a reason there have been few great movies made from the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and the like. Even To Kill a Mockingbird, ranked 25th on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest movies of all time, is a piece of crap compared to the novel (seriously… the movie blows. I don’t care how many awards it won).
Any story can be told in print. Not all stories can be told most effectively that way. I love Jake’s last paragraph. This isn’t a profession with much room for one-track minds anymore.
The book is not always better.
First off, The Shawshank Redemption was a short story, not a novel. So there.
I’m not saying the book is always better, and I’m not saying every story should be told in print. However, I also think it’s dangerous to say definitively that a story CAN’T be told more effectively in a different way.
I think it depends more on the storyteller rather than the form. The ability to create a vibrant picture for a reader is what matters here, and that’s possible in any form. They do it very well with video here. Could someone do it better through print? Maybe, maybe not.
But if we make those assumptions, then we have no impetus to continue writing stories that seem difficult to write. Those stories, every once in a while, turn into magic.
Can the book be better? Absolutely, yes. Can it be better in film? Sure, no doubt. What matters most is the way you present it and the work you put into it. It’s about making the most of that template.
And fun fact, in Stephen King’s short story “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” Red is a white Irish man with bright red hair. I, too, preferred the film adaptation in that sense. Morgan Freeman FTW.
Technically it’s a novella, which my dictionary defines as either a short novel or a long short story, so I say we’re both right.
For what it’s worth, I’d love to try writing this story. I still say no print story could carry the same emotional impact and that there are certain visceral, emotional reactions that print struggles to replicate that video can capture much better. But that wouldn’t keep me from trying. There’s certainly still plenty here to put together a beautiful print story.
Jesse, you’re entering very dangerous territory by even talking about Fight Club.
Anyway, this is a great story about the commonality of sports–it’s not all glory and success. There’s an equal amount of floundering around and failing. We all probably played for teams that didn’t do well, lost more often than won and experienced a hefty amount of personal embarrassment along the way (or you were on teams that I always played and won a bunch). In a sports world where we hear the same cadence from coaches and players about what they did to win, and long-winded, short on real explanations as to losing, it’s refreshing to hear children talk about why they think they struggle. They have no concept of expectations, no more eyes watching the game than those physically present and no little to no outside pressure to succeed. They give child-like answers to their team’s ailments, and it feels more real than anything you hear at an NFL post game conference.
Tell a print journalist that they couldn’t tell a story as well as a video did, and watch that writer fume. I would never say a story couldn’t be told in a different medium, because that would be just the impetus that storyteller needs to outdo it. I’m positive a writer could tell this story just as well. It’s the difference between storytellers. David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk are two different storytellers. So are Spielberg and Crichton. No matter if you like the book better than the movie, or vice versa, it’s the difference between storytellers. The good ones will make a story work, no matter the medium. A good director could take a bad book and make it a great movie. A good novelist could watch a bad movie and spin into a great book.
Mini-docs are great because the company normally gives free reign to their employees on stories. It’ll be going on the Internet, so a.) no time constraints, b.) it can be formatted to however the journalist decides it needs to be formatted. This would never, ever air on a local TV station. And if it did, it would feature many more sound bytes of the kids and coaches with annoying intrusions from the journalist to tell the backstory in between. “Nat packages”, which are stories that feature just the sounds and voices of those involved, are the highest form of the broadcast story. You are letting the subjects tell the entire story, and the journalist’s job is simply to put the images together for distribution. Because newscasts have an allotted amount of on-air time, and that time is getting shorter and shorter, stories are becoming shorter and shorter. The Internet is place where video storytellers can bring the stories they want, told as long as they need to be. And that is where print will always have an advantage over video.
“I would never say a story couldn’t be told in a different medium, because that would be just the impetus that storyteller needs to outdo it.”
All the more reason to doubt the storyteller in the first place. The bad ones will believe you (and no one wants to read their crap anyway). The great ones will prove you wrong. Maybe I just believe that strongly in Mike and am trying to push him over the edge.
Or maybe I’m just kind of a jerk.
And I’m not afraid of Tyler Durden.
Not better or worse, just different. I think that is the conclusion that many of us would like see as ideal when picturing a certain type of story being told across various mediums. I believe that each medium carries with it certain strengths and drawbacks or limitations, and a huge advantage of the video element is that people are able to express emotion firsthand. To put it simply, that is what makes video the best choice for this particular story – a video story is the only type of story that could have let each of these little soccer players tell us who they are, upfront and unfiltered. A text story depicting this same team certainly wouldn’t be better and most likely couldn’t be categorized as worse (depending on how compelling it would be written) – just different.