Football correspondents attending games

rhroyal · by **rhroyal** » 10 Feb 2010 10:48

One of my good friends at home graduated in the summer from UCL in London having studied journalism and history. He is a very hard working guy and a good writer, and right now he's trying to make it as a freelance journalist in a very competitive world.

He's also doing alright for himself, he's recently been made sub editor at a fairly well know online football blogging site (don't want to give away any identity so I won't say which).

However, when he told me I noticed something very strange. He's been assigned to the site's section on Spanish football. He's never even been to a Spanish football match himself. His reports are good, I imagine they're accurate. However, they're full of generic terms such "They dominated the first half and played some very good football", "They started the quicker of the two teams", "They were unlucky not to lead by more at the break".....All taken from just a few paragraphs in one report.

It describes the goals and other key chances well enough, but you can tell that he didn't watch the match himself. Should football reporters attend matches more often? So often I read reports about our matches where I know the writer was not present, and it can annoy me when they miss things that people inside the stadium see.

Just to add an argument, I'm in HK and from places such as this, papers etc. I could tell you about our matches this season in decent detail. However, I can truthfully say it doesn't give you the same insight as attending the match itself and watching every incident over the 90 minutes.

Thaumagurist* · by Thaumagurist* » 10 Feb 2010 10:59

Yes, I think they should actually attend games. Too many times reporters write a lot of gash. Especially when it's biased in favour of the bigger club. And sometimes they waffle on about the bigger club and only a couple of lines about the game.

TBM · by **TBM** » 10 Feb 2010 11:02

Thaumagurist* wrote:Yes, I think they should actually attend games. Too many times reporters write a lot of gash. Especially when it's biased in favour of the bigger club. And sometimes they waffle on about the bigger club and only a couple of lines about the game.

The problem is with nearly every match played people can see the goals/highlights a couple of hours later on the TV/Internet so the reports on websites and papers become more redundant

Hoop Blah · by **Hoop Blah** » 10 Feb 2010 12:46

rh, this is exactly why you shouldn't take the newspapers reports as being reflective of a game or a players performance.

The majority are based on brief highlights or a PA/Opta set of stats and fitting it into a pre-concieved story or view of the match.

Use your eyes and make your own mind up and don't worry about stuff you don't see for yourself.

Row Z Royal · by **Row Z Royal** » 10 Feb 2010 12:51

Thaumagurist* wrote:Yes, I think they should actually attend games. Too many times reporters write a lot of gash. Especially when it's biased in favour of the bigger club. And sometimes they waffle on about the bigger club and only a couple of lines about the game.

However, no newpaper can afford to have a reporter at each of the 46 league games each weekend, plus the SPLOL and Conference games which are also covered.

The alternative is to have a local free-lancer at each game who sells his report to each newspaper, but you'll just end up with a load of reports that read the same, as is currently the case.

Anyway, if you're enough of a fan to be looking for an article about your club, then the likelihood is that you'll have another avenue of finding out about games...like Hobnob or the 606 forums.