ABSTRACT
Some would call sports journalism an oxymoron. That’s not completely true. Most journalists outside of sports would call sports journalism an oxymoron. Your newsroom colleagues generally view you as an over-grown kid who earns a paycheck by “playing” at journalism. There is a reason for that perception among newsies. Oftentimes sports writers are the ultimate sports fans, publicly praising the team in victory and criticizing it following losses. Also, sports writers are often expected to be shills for the sports teams they cover. Sometimes with a wink and a nod, representatives for those teams tell the writer to “give us some good pub.” The division between being a supporter of a team and an unbiased reporter is sometimes so narrow that you can hear a sports writer quietly – or not so quietly – cheer between paragraphs while writing a story.
