By the end however, reporting was king. The profile pieces that capped off the semester could have been written for Harvey and Irene’s feature reporting class just as easily. If Prof. Pessah has taught one thing over the course of the semester it’s that reporting sports can be an effective gateway into reporting anything else.

Examples of this were bountiful in Gary Smith’s collection of articles that served as our textbook for the year. With stories about tragic death and remarkable lives, Smith used sports not as the focus of his pieces so much as the lens through which to observe otherwise ordinary lives.

It was a technique brought to life in the classroom as well. Guest speakers, many of who have been on the other side of the reporter’s notebook, revealed unique insight into the world of journalism. One, Matt Zash, revealed a side of journalism that is frequently cited as unethical, immoral and unnecessary. Zash was one of the Duke lacrosse players when the team was charged—falsely, as it turned out—with gang rape and hate crimes. Journalism, argued Zash, did not do its duty to accurately report the story. Nancy Grace, who went on nightly tirades at any guests who dared to defend the lacrosse players, embodied journalism’s overboard coverage of the story.

Prof. Pessah meanwhile served as shepherd to the class, guiding his students through obstacles of reporting. His insight provided fresh angles to storytelling and narration. If a reporter does his or her job correctly, we learned, a story should write itself.

Overall, the class was very rewarding. Lessons I have learned over the last few months will likely carry over into other reporting classes next semester and beyond. And while I likely won’t end up covering sports in my career, Sports Reporting has provided me with skills that translate into any field.

I didn’t realize that he had done so much reporting to get what he got. I mean after taking the class i realizee that there is a lot to be done before you get a simple story like ours in class.  So i just couldnt graspt that Smtih talked to ovedr 20 people and  visited the area dozens of times.   I envy that as a journalist and I know when I have time to dedicate to just my job and work, I will be similarily dedicated.  It was a great story once again of detail and made you imagine allt hat was going on.

My sports internship consisted of going to games, asking a few questions about the game and going back to cut the bites.  Those bites just added value and background to the game, rather than anything about the athleetes themselves.  

This class taught me a lot about researching players and getting to know those peopel you need to know to get what you need. (Like Jeremy in the atheltics department).  Instead of just knowing the players, you have to know all about them and how their world works.  I would have liked to have more free time to work harder on assignments and be ablle to do more research.  I feel my other classes held me back in this class.  I would change my schedule if I could do it all over again.  But it is what it is, and I was able to do what I could do.

The best thing about this class was the variety of speakers we had.  I love nothing more than to hear people talk about the real world I am about to enter and what their role is in it.  We had coaches, to editors, to reporters, to people that were covered in the news.  It was great to hear all their stories and give advice and direction the best they could from their experiences.  

I also enjoyed the Gary Smith readings.  I was able to understand and appreciate how indepth reporting can generate into an amazing story!  The one with the man and women with scuba diving stuck out a lot because of the love drama that was going on.  Smith’s writing is envious and being a broadcast major, I truly enjoy someone that can make you visualize the story.  His use of details make me want to work to be a writer but I think that is a far reach for me.  

I learned from this class that doing the basic amount of reporting is NOT going to cut it.  I would think I did enough reporting about somethign and then meet with you and get ripped apart.  There are things that I just don’t think of or think to research, but in the end make perfect sense.  When I did my firist video from the albany basketball game, I thought I was doing a great job.  It was just like what I see at my internship, the game just being reported.  But when I had it looked at with you, I realized that I had much improvement to do.  I learned that research, research, research is the biggest tool in sports reproting. To know your sugject better than they know themselves. With that, I enjoyed this class and learned a lot to take with me as I continue on my journalism career.

I’m sure a lot of people came into the class with certain perceptions that were altered by listening to the different people who came to class.

I also thought the Gary Smith readings were very helpful.  That is a great part of the class that is simple, yet very helpful.  Just being able to read Smith on a regular basis should help any young sports reporter understand what sports profile and long form stories are all about.

The one thing I was a little disappointed with was the lack of the actual nuts and bolts of sports writing.  It’s understandable in any class like this, considering the different levels of abilities and knowledge that people came into the class with.  I liked your idea of doing some more in class assignments and bringing a few people to the side and working on different things with them.

However, after reading Gary Smith all semester and listening to the guest speakers describe their careers I realized how weak my grasp of this profession really was.

My favorite element of the course was the Gary Smith readings. Every story that we were assigned to read didn’t feel like an assignment.  We were given a lesson on how good a story can be if enough reporting is done accurately.  Besides being a skilled writer, Smith was an even better reporter and showed in every story we covered.

Additionally, I was a huge fan of the guest speakers.  From meeting our school’s AD for the first time to meeting Grant Hill’s mother, each one of them provided his or her known tale about the various subcategories of sports journalism.  These were especially effective because instead of having you stand in front of the class and tell us about these subcategories, you brought in members of the profession to show us them.

The greatest thing that I learned from this class is that it is essential to do reporting on top of reporting in order to produce a worthwhile story.  I always knew that I was supposed to make conversation with my sources rather than bombard them questions.  I always knew that I was supposed to show m story the readers rather than tell it to them.  I always knew that I was supposed to become as qualified, if not more qualified, than my sources so I could write my story rather than tell it through a plethora of quotes.  But, i9n this course I was able to put these bits of knowledge into practice.

This course and the style of writing that it required of the students was, in my opinion, different from any of the other journalism courses that I have taken thus fat at Stony Brook.  We were driven towards writing feature stories rather than news stories which was a nice change of pace from the other courses of this major.

I thought that the organization of the course was a bit shaky, however that is to be expected with a first time teacher. I thought things ran much smoother during the second half of the term.  Overall, you kept us in line by filling our inboxes with updates (annoying at times but effective to keep us on the same page) and you pushed us to produce work of the quality that you’d expect from your colleagues at ESPN.  You treated us as colleagues instead of as students and I felt that I was able to focus more on improving my skills as a journalist rather than on my grades because of it.

            Getting into the groove of the class I began to enjoy the class more and more. My all time favorite element of the class had to be the guest speakers. It reminded me that we are truly journalism students and our purpose is to learn, take notes and use our “shoe-leather.” The guest speakers provided an insight to the different angles of covering sports, the beautiful, the difficult and the ugly. It was as if we got “the exclusive.”

            Another element that I appreciated was the Gary Smith book that was assigned. It was unlike any other and quite enjoyable to read. I strongly recommend its use in the upcoming semesters. The stories are timeless.

            Overall, I was happy I took this course. As a professor, you were more than helpful and easily accessible which I feel is essential is most classes, especially journalism courses. We were not babied which tends to happen often and we were not thrown to the wolves. I feel like the assignments were helpful and worthwhile. I think you felt unsure of yourself at times, but you should know you did an AWESOME JOB!

I think the guest speakers that came to class were really helpful in getting us to understand different parts of the sports media. Pikiell first helped us gain insight into the world of NCAA basketball. A lot of us learned to go through the SID office to contact athletes. Matt Zash’s visit and surrounding literature and learned how the media and different authorities surrounding a situation can mishandle it so much and in turn ruin the lives of a team of innocent young men. Roxanne Jones helped us all think about the LeBron vogue cover differently and also gave us some insight into the struggle she went through to get to the point in her career she’s in now. Mackey gave us some insight into the lives of his top-level girl’s high school basketball players. Overall, the speakers were from a nice array of people surrounding the sports world.

The Gary smith readings were all very good ways to show us how a writer can talk about sports and tell a story at the same time. His stories showed extensive, in-depth reporting, with lots of sources and confident writing. In each story we read, I learned something new about another sport, whether it be scuba diving or polo, to something new about a culture, like the Native Americans. His writing should definitely be kept in the curriculum, so that students can have a style to work towards that they can also grow from as well.

The writing assignments that were given in the class were good, and kept everyone on their toes regarding the strange deadlines that were sometimes set. The assignments themselves were good because they made everyone give their own personal assessment of a reading or of a guest, and really forced everyone to pay attention and think critically about things so that we could write about it later.

The general things that we talked about in class were good. We talked a lot about the steroids case and Barry Bonds and how we, as sports journalists would handle information in such a story. Talking about the readings and other articles we read helped get everyone to get used to sharing their ideas and criticisms with other people. It also offered some insight into other ways of examining something that you may never have thought of before. The class lectures were good too, Prof had some pretty good words of wisdom to share with the class.

I realized throughout the semester that sports reporting isn’t necessarily writing about the scores of sporting events or even strictly about sports. It is a combination of that and profiles and other life stories about players and their personal lives. I think that was the biggest lesson this class has taught me and all of my pre-conceived notions about sports reporting have been forever changed. 

 The assignments I felt were fair but the reviews of all of the readings were a little repetitive. I think if we talked about them during class as a group it would have been more productive. 

I think the guest speakers were really good and they each brought something different to the class. My favorite speaker was probably Janet Hill because of her colorful personality and her area of work.

Overall, the class was not what I originally expected and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I learned a lot about what and how to write about different angles of the sports world and how much time a reporter needs to invest in his or her subject in order to do a thorough job.

I definitely think that this book should be used again. Gary Smith’s writing really makes me think of sports stories in entirely new ways. Through these readings I learned so much about sports I never knew about, as well as the struggles that the people involved in them go through. Smith’s writing style is also something that I think future students should read and try to emulate and learn from as much as they can. The amount of detail that he includes in his stories show an immense research effort on his part that should be examined as well.

For a society known for exclusivity, Smith gained remarkable access to the Crows, revealing a culture shaped equally by basketball and by alcohol. Smith does a fantastic job of using sports—high school basketball in this case—as a lens through which to tell a story that by all measures is bigger than a game.

Several times in the article, Smith refers to basketball as a drug and a toxin. Reading about how actual habitual drug use and alcohol consumption is all too common among the reservations, I had assumed that Smith’s references were metaphorical. But after the second time through the story, I came to another conclusion. Perhaps more than any other sport, basketball is known for its rags-to-riches narratives. And while that can act as a beacon of hope for some people, the lofty, towering promise of success can also cast a wide shadow all its own.