In August, the Chicago Tribune held a roundtable discussion with its beat writers about covering sports in the time of COVID-19. Some of the highlights.
Paul Sullivan:
You really cannot plan for anything when everything is subject to change at a moment’s notice, so you just have to go with the flow.
With only a few postgame sessions, players who have a bad game never have to face the music afterward, except for starting pitchers. Managers are more guarded than ever, and off-the-record conversations are becoming obsolete. Sports writers are an endangered species, except for those working for MLB-sanctioned websites that can’t offer honest criticism of the product.
Colleen Kane:
But for now, the weirdest part is interacting with players and coaches only over video calls. … man, I miss face-to-face interactions.
Anyway, with such a large Bears media corps, the calls make it easier to get in one question because we simply push the “raise hand” button and the media relations rep calls on us. That means we don’t have to shout over one another as we usually do at news conferences. But it also means we are sometimes limited to one or two questions per session. Some reporters overcome these circumstances by asking three questions in one turn. I won’t name names.
Jamal Collier:
Look, I totally understand why media access is all over Zoom right now, and I don’t think crowding into a room for a news conference or into a locker room is a great idea. But Zoom calls are even less of a natural setting than a news conference, and the answers suffer because of it. I generally like to do a lot of my reporting in one-on-one settings and treat interviews as a conversation, and that’s nearly impossible to accomplish virtually with a bunch of other people on the line.
One of the biggest advantages to showing up on a beat every day comes from noticing an extra thing at practice or during warm-ups, or from the little side conversations with players or coaches or people in the front office — people I usually see during the season more often than my family.
Phil Thompson
I’m conducting interviews from the couch. I’m watching games from the couch. I feel like a fan now. Maybe I’ll send myself a testy email asking why I’m still using Corsi.