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A putt in time
INTRODUCTION | ||||||
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TEACHERS I would guess that most of our readers are sports fans — especially football, golf and tennis — but many are not. I always like to point out to them that you don’t have to be a fan to enjoy the stories in the sports section. The stories are lively and they are often human-interest stories as much as sports stories. I am always amazed at how fast a good sports writer can get out a story after a competition and that is where I have chosen to focus today — not just on the writer, but on our sports editors as well, who were obviously working fast and furiously during the night to edit and lay out our coverage of Tiger Woods’ victory in the British Open for the next day. In the student’s lesson, I discuss the reason why this story was a bit easier than most to produce in a hurry. You might want to look at the story a bit more closely, however. Notice that the opening was obviously written as soon as the competition ended and after Tiger Woods had given his first interviews. Much of the body of the story was probably written earlier, while the competition was still going on. The writer focused a lot of attention on the failure of Tiger’s opponents to mount a challenge. The writer goes through the players one by one, pointing out where they failed. Since all except Olazabal finished before Woods, this would have been relatively easy to do — especially with a computer where we can write individual texts beforehand and then cut and paste them into the final story at any point. After discussing failures, the writer moves on to two successes by veteran players Fred Couples and Nick Faldo, both of whom finished more than an hour before Woods. The writer then ends with an interesting story about the habit Tiger has of winning whenever Jack Nicklaus retires from a competition. This was probably planned well in advance of that night’s competition. STUDENTS Well, our sports editors managed to get in a full story on Tiger Wood’s victory in only a short time. The story is laid out nicely too, and it doesn’t appear to be a hurried job despite the fact the final copy came in very near press time. How did they do it?First of all, we obviously don’t have our own reporters covering the story. You’ll notice that this story came from the news agencies Reuters and AFP. Their writers did quite a remarkable job of coming up with a very well organised and detailed story in such a short time. Notice that it even contained quotes from Tiger Woods after his victory. One thing that made the story easier to write was that Tiger Woods won so easily. By the 12th hole, it looked very likely that he would win, and by the 16th hole he had an insurmountable six-stroke lead. Thus, the writer didn’t have to wait until the competition was over to start writing. Sports writers often write the body of the story during the competition and they add the opening when it finishes. It also helped that there was a clear theme to yesterday’s competition: the expected challenge from Tiger’s opponents never materialised except for a brief attack by Colin Montgomery. Notice how the writer develops this theme for more than half the story, beginning with paragraph 10 (“Seven players began the day with a serious chance of catching Woods…”) |
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OUR STORY FROM THE BANGKOK POST
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All rights reserved 2005 | Last modified: August 1, 2005 | ||||||
Tiger Woods
displays the trophy after winning the British Open Championship. — AP