Sports on the front page? Naturally

My friend and former colleague Tim Wheatley, sports editor at the Baltimore Sun, is at APSE's annual convention in Minneapolis this week. He asked me for some tips for sport editors on how to develop stories for the front page. Here's my advice:

--Capitalize on the fact that sports provide social connectedness and community identity which make them natural fodder for front page stories. This is especially true at big moments involving both teams and individual athletes when even fair weather fans are paying attention. In general use those big moments to capitalize on your readers’ interest in the big game, signing, ruling, announcement. Use the news peg to tell them something they don’t already know and can’t find (at least as well) elsewhere.

--People seem to prefer personality stories over issue stories. So write about people even when you’re writing about an issue. In indiana, Bobby Knight is a perennial front page possibility. So are Peyton Manning and Danica Patrick. It’s probably an easy bet that the average American knows more about Tiger Woods than the chief justice of the United States. So when you can, combine the draw of personality with the importance of an issue. Big Brown’s failed quest for the triple crown made us care about whether steroids should be banned in horse racing. Greg Oden offered the opportunity to write about the value of a college degree versus big money in the NBA. Hank Aaron called up the lingering question of racism in America...Use the stars at all levels of sport to evoke a meaningful discussion.

--Find more stories at the intersection of beats. There’s Sports and Business and Sports and Entertainment, of course. But what about sports and education, sports and fashion, sports and philanthropy, sports and religion? Surely if you put reporters from these beats in the same room, they’d come up with at least one front page story idea. The trick is to get the sports beat reporter to ask the non sports reporter to lunch with the mission of coming up with one good story idea and a plan for getting it done.

--Use blogs and other social networks to find out what people are talking about beyond the mainstream media. What if your preps reporter created a list serve with 20 high school coaches so the coaches could talk to each other about things they’re interested in. Your reporter could monitor the site for ideas and also use the coaches as a sounding board. Beyond your own site, are there Sports blogs in your community you should be aware of, linking to, making use of?

--Important, interesting, original, unusual, agonizing, unfair, in-depth, humorous, touching...Home in on what you think would make the story special to the widest number of readers and make sure it’s well-reported and written with an active voice, with description, good quotes, context and perspective. And don’t let anyone tell you or your reporters that doing so is not as hard as rocket science.