The Baseball Test for Journalists

Hoisted from comments: Bernard Yomtov:

I repeat my previous suggestion for the "baseball test." A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a baseball writer is expected to have of baseball.

Comments

[Joe S.]

The baseball test sounds good, but isn't realistic. It demands too much: a deep tacit knowledge that can only be gained by years of experience.

Instead, I would use the "lawyer test": "A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a good trial lawyer can pick up in three weeks." This means, at least, that a.) the lawyer can respond to the probing questions of intelligent generalists (called "judges"), and b.) that the lawyer can deflate bullshit with informed cross-examination.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Glenn Greenwald is a much better generalist reporter than the "pros."

[chad]

Or, why don't we just assign sports journalists to cover politics and world events? The type of critical thinking, questioning of authorities, histoical context, and statistical analysis that sports journalism regularly exhibits is nowhere to be seen in a lot of what passes for "serious" political journalism. Plus, sports journalism says when people are lying, and doesn't just transcribe what powerful people say. I'm pretty sure most sports journalists could do better covering politics and finance than their colleagues do...

Its obvious enough - pick up your local paper, read the sports section, then go over to the political pages. The differnce in the quality of coverage is really striking.

[Rob]

Problem is, very few writers about baseball understand how baseball works. and I'm not just talking about the stats stuff, though the fact that the MVP is decided by RBI totals shows that sports reporters are idiots. I'm talking basic roster management things.

For example, contracts in baseball are gaurenteed. Which means come spring training when you can have 60 people there, they aren't competing for 25 spots. You likely have 20 men under contract so you hav e 40 players competing for like 5 spots. But baseball writers act like Spring Training is just like a long high school tryout where the manger picks the best 25 players over those two weeks regardless of contract status.

And don't get me started about how they attribute decisions to the manager that are made by the GM.

See firejoemorgan.com for more

[Joe S.]

Chad:
You propose that sportswriters cover politics. There is a two-word response to this: Westbrook Pegler.

[NBarnes]

http://www.firejoemorgan.com

I am not convinced that the republic would be well served by more journamalism such as characterizes ESPN Baseball Tonight.

On the other hand, I'd totally vote for the guys over at USS Mariner (http://www.ussmariner.com).

[chris]

It's true -- if big-city sports columnists is full of BS, he'll hear about it in ever bar he walks into. Not so with politics.

[gecko1]

The baseball test is pretty low bar unless you're talking about Baseball Prospectus.

www.baseballprospectus.com

[green apron monkey]

This is a bad rule. Many baseball writers are woefully ignorant of the sport they cover.

A perusal of www.firejoemorgan.com would be instructive.

[Grumpy]

Joe S. "A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a good trial lawyer can pick up in three weeks."

If it only takes three weeks to become conversant in the subject, why limit the crash courses to journalists (or lawyers)? Make every registered voter take 'em!

The problem, of course, is that the general population will not absorb this type of information, not in three weeks or three years. And journalists, sadly, are drawn from the general population.

[Joe S.]

Grumpy:
It's not that journalists are drawn from the general population and lawyers are not. Both, these days, often come from the same Ivy League pod. The difference is that an ill-prepared lawyer is savaged by the judge or the opposite side. An ill-prepared journo? No consequences. Most especially if said journo is a pundit.

And that is why Brad is doing God's work, creating bad consequences for bad journalists. Not only Brad: Atrios, Digby, Josh, Bob Somerby, and half the rest of left Blogistan.

[PSP]

Isn't too much inside baseball the problem?

[wcw]

No, the problem is precisely that most baseball writers are idiots.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

The best sports writing, imho, is done by Michael Lewis, whose skill I would characterise as "systems analyst." Both his baseball and his football books are superb. Only Lewis has moved me to question my fairly tenaciously held belief that professional sports is a total crock.

Obviously Lewis is either or both an economist 'n a biologist. But it's too late at night for me to think about the perennial question of which, between economics and biology, is the subset of the other.

[christofay]

Chad:

The answer to your proposal is Keith Olberman, he jumped from ESPN to being the runner-up to the Daily Show to some degree of truth in on-air bloviating

[Anon]

The problem is that journalism, fundamentally, is a low-requirements job: "Can you read and write English? You're in!". It's a job that everyone wants and everyone can do, which means salaries are quite low. Which means it can't attract really bright and talented people. Which means they're vastly outclassed when they go up against, say, Karl Rove, who is bright.

If you really wanted bright and talented journalists, capable of seeing through the bullshit, you'd have to pay them five times as much. The resulting work product would be a lot better, but would it bring in five times the revenue of five crappy journalists? I don't know, probably not.

[NeilS]

Joe S

What you learn in 3 weeks is just enough to be dangerous.

You know all of the rules, but none of the caveats....

....and you're confident in your conclusions.

However, even if you know a lot about baseball, that doesn't mean you'll always get it right. That's why the 'experts' argue about it all day long on the radio.

[Felix]

And how is the reporter meant to get that understanding, without doing any reporting? You learn your beat by reporting your beat. Otherwise, you can only hire reporters who have worked in the industry you want them to cover.

[John Emerson]

Top-level journalists are paid pretty well. Lots of smart people could learn to do it and would be willing to, but journalists are selected in part for the ability to spin news consistent with the editorial line. There's a long list of good journalists fired for stepping on toes, and another long list of dishonest journalists promoted for playing by the rules. I do not understand the "low-level incompetence" explanation so popular MANAGEMENT PROBLEM. There's a whole layer of nameless editors above the bylined writers whoae job is trimming the stories to fit, and some stories never are published at all. Reporters occasionally even go through back channels to get stories out which their own publication is suppressing.

Sports: sports is the training ground for a lot of reporters, and it's a selling point for newspapers. Regardless of the level of analysis, box scores are accurate, and this leads silly people to think that the other news is accurate too.

[John Emerson]

S/B "I do not understand the "low-level incompetence" explanation so popular among nice liberals. It's a MANAGEMENT PROBLEM.

[Charles]

I remember quite a few years ago, a friend showed me an article in the Sporting News. The writer was curious about a rule change in Major League Baseball, and was surprised at the lack of interest in the new rule from other sportswriters. His curiosity piqued, he decided to do a survey and see how many sportswriters owned a copy of the MLB rulebook. Answer: none. Furthermore, none of the writers had ever SEEN the rulebook, let alone read from it. He decided to check out the MLB players, not a single one had ever seen the rulebook.

OK, what does it say about a sport when the players and the sportswriters don't know the rules? How the hell can you play a game when only the umpires know the rules?

[Jerry Jeff]

If baseball writers knew baseball so well, papers around the country wouldn't have printed so much copy about Barry Bonds "breaking" the homerun record. It's obvious to all the non baseball-writers that he's a cheater.

[Charles]

You've never been to a press conference for any sport if you hold this up as a test of quality.

Some of the definitely least-informed, least empathic questions I've ever heard - in 20+ years covering sports, science, medicine, technology, business and general news at all levels from trade paper to daily national newspaper - have been in sports. I covered tennis for about seven years. Knowing the game well helped understand the players. But if you want to know how Pat Cash actually felt when he won Wimbledon, you have to ask him. No point guessing that you think you know.

But since I suspect this is *still* about the "Intel Inside" question asked of Steve Jobs - where I see that a parade of bloggers is *still* thinking that to assume they know an answer is better than to *ask the damn question and get it explicit* - I'll reiterate: better to be thought foolish by asking the question than to let ignorance bloom by not doing so.

What's so discouraging about this is the number of people who've never even troubled to ask the way when they're lost who think they know what journalism entails. It is not just writing. It is not just asking questions. And it is not just opinion.

Karl Rove's smartness can be discounted by the simple mechanism used by one prominent British journalist: you say to yourself "Why is this lying sod lying to me?"

Charles

[Bruce]

The phrase is catchy but it doesn't work for me.

My Dad worked in a professional sport for years. He deeply mistrusted reporters and didn't believe anything they wrote on the sports page. This was a commonly held attitude among his colleagues, who got the real story directly from those involved, not from the media, who inevitably got it wrong.

And then he'd turn to the front page of the paper and believe what he read there! I'm still amazed at that.

I think most articles about politics or baseball can be judged by the financial impact the article will have. The less potential financial impact, the more likely the article has some truth in it.

This is one reason why articles about playing baseball seem truer and better than political articles. Nobody cares, in a major financial way, about how the game of baseball is played on the field. As long as a baseball writer doesn't lower attendance, circulation, or TV/Radio ratings they can say whatever they want.

[Wiley]

Here's the trouble: In any field of thought -- be it the baseball field or no -- there's always more esoteric information that could be had. But how much information is enough? Which information only confuses things? The journalist is the middle man between the expert on the one hand and the lay person on the other.

If a journalist needs any super-power, it's the one that allows she or he to grasp things quickly and boil things down for those who listen, read, and watch.

[Timtron]

The fact that this guy call these people "reporters" and "journalists" makes it clear he is part of the problem and not part of the solution.

[Tom]

@ Jerry Jeff "But if you want to know how Pat Cash actually felt when he won Wimbledon, you have to ask him."

I think part of the problem with sports reporting is that this is thought of as sports reporting.

[SB]

I propose that a reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless she/he exercises some critical thinking skills. Simply regurgitating press releases, neglecting to generate decent sources doesn't cut it. I don't mind if they're not experts in the subject matter but I do mind that they don't care enough to find news that is well sourced and objective.

I also can't blame the reporters. Publishers and editorial management are out to lunch. What kind of system works the way many newsrooms do today. They take some of their best reporters and promote them to management where instead of building some kind of journalistic focus for the team, they manage schedules, pay, budget and personnel issues AND edit stories. Where do you think these managers are going to focus their attention when their bonuses are paid on the former rather than the latter?

Let journalists be journalists.

[DannoRecommends]

I wish my tv had a button to mute the commentary but still hear the sounds of the game. Usually I just turn on the closed captioning.