Are sports journalists becoming redundant in todays tech-savvy world- Part II

Carmelo Anthony

A couple of days ago, I had written an article in which I talked about whether sports journalists are becoming redundant in today's highly modernized world or not. 

The article focused on how advancements in social media such as Twitter, Instagram and The Players’ Tribune, has brought the casual fan a lot closer to athletes themselves.

In turn, is the ‘middle man’, the person who interviews a player and then publishes the players’ thoughts really required in today’s tech-savvy world or not…? When all the athlete has to do is just open their machine and tweet their thoughts on a particular subject.  

After all, the same idea expressed in an interview can be shared on twitter by the athletes themselves, saving time for reporters and athletes.

After doing some more research and listening to a podcast, I feel I wrote that article a bit too early in my excitement, and I know I haven’t argued my points well enough. So therefore, I am writing a part II to my previous article, hoping to include a few more points supportive of the idea that sports journalists are far from being redundant in today’s society.

Lets take the example of beat writers. Beat reporting, also known as specialized reporting, is a genre in journalism where a particular topic or issue is covered in-depth, and in as much detail as possible.

In sports journalism you have a lot of beat reporters for different publications that are assigned a particular team to cover through the season.

Chris Herring of the Wall Street Journal is one such example of a beat writer whose beat is the New York Knicks. Herring travels with the team and after each game, goes inside the locker room to interview players for his next assignment.

However, here’s the catch: he isn’t just any other reporter who is recapping the game. Instead, he tries to shine some light upon an issue that isn’t discussed or brought up very frequently; such as the story on Carmelo Anthony playing chess, which not many people knew he did, before Herring investigated this and released the story.

Herring took it upon himself to deeply follow up a quote Carmelo Anthony said, and eventually this led him to writing a unique piece that not many other people would have!    

And I’m sure there are few others just like Herring who don’t just recap a game in words, that’s what the NBA Channel on YouTube is there for!

So my argument is, no matter how close fans get with their favorite athlete via social media, the need for sports journalists will never become redundant.

Their work isn’t just to tell fans what happened in a game, but instead to investigate give insights into topics that the casual fan wouldn’t know about, and this is something that an athlete wouldn’t share with their fans out of the blue on Twitter.

Agreed, a player can post a picture on Instagram of he/she playing chess, or doing something not many people knew they did, but finding that out from someone else who has real quotes from the player and real proof is a whole lot better than seeing a picture of them which they may have shot in the spur of the moment and may not even be completely true.  

And this, this, is the true value of sports journalists.

Therefore, to conclude, sports journalists will never become redundant, no matter how much technology advances and no matter how easy it is for fans to speak with their sporting idol, some things are there for certain and for the better – sports journalists.