Airon Servais and Luke Benson Press Conference | Aug 19

[LeMoyneCuse]

Media are supposed to be the lifelines to the teams they are covering for fans.

PR has way more to do with this than the beat writers. Remember the awesome Donnie Webb Oklahoma Drill video from the '09 season? Basically captured the moment Marrone changed the Syracuse program? The beat writers would do that again in heart beat. They're not allowed to because coaches are PR-trained not to.

It’s not that way anymore. It’s mainly about clicks, agendas or what increases their own brand.

Again, you're blaming the beat writers. They're doing their jobs. This is all the result of investment capital buying in and demanding more results from fewer resources. And you think it's bad for the Syracuse beat? Local news is unwatchable for the reasons you cite above.

They can do it and fans can call it out for what it is.

I'm telling you how they're trained. Complain all you want - just know where it's coming from.

 

[LeMoyneCuse]

Hey wait a second, I'm just here to complain, not actually trying to take action and contacting people!

And I can't keep my mouth shut if I have the opportunity to make an argument on something I know a lot about, especially if no one asked for it!

 

[Bulldog04]

I hope babers is telling players to keep quiet about schemes on both sides of the ball. We can finally be on the right side of the “We didn’t have tape on them” because of all the new coaches. Hope it’s all very vague BC first year coaches can be a great advantage

 

[cusefan88]

I would imagine the writers don't think the season will happen and will grab lots of quotes/copy to write those stories in 2-3 weeks tops.

If they get to game week maybe you'll get football questions. I don't think ACC makes it to game week IMO

 

[javadoc]

This is not supposed to sound personal, just an observation based on my experience as a former news producer, as well as my wife's - who has sports beat writing experience.

For a reporter to ask how practice is going and the adjustments are going and other general optimism stuff five days after a report from The Athletic's beat writer made us all question if there was going to be Syracuse football this year is a bad look because it's ignoring the actual stories. Those stories being player unity, player concerns, handling of testing, spiking rates at multiple Syracuse opponents, and how they're actually going to do this safely. The fact that players may sit out for Liberty because of COVID concerns is a far bigger potential story than the team adapting to the 3-3-5.

Hype stories and previews are filler for anything else to talk about. While fun, there's much bigger news happening right now.

And personally, I care far more about whether or not there will be a season than how the team looks at the moment. Because if the team doesn't take the field this fall, what does it matter?

Honest question. When journalists decide what the important story is, to whom is it important? Is it a quasi-objective determination ("hey guys, this is what's important, regardless of what you may want to read") or is it conscious of what the readers want to read? Both?

Because I want to hear about the football details, and enough with the team Covid stuff already.

 

[LeMoyneCuse]

Honest question. When journalists decide what the important story is, to whom is it important? Is it a quasi-objective determination ("hey guys, this is what's important, regardless of what you may want to read") or is it conscious of what the readers want to read? Both?

Because I want to hear about the football details, and enough with the team Covid stuff already.

That's a very good and a super philosophical question. I'm going to try and break it down into chunks.

The approach of a newsroom on a busy day is to tell you what's important. What's important may not be what you want to hear. (This is not to say that audience wants and needs aren't important, but we'll come back to that.)

Journalists alone aren't making coverage / story decisions. Editors (print) and producers (TV) have significant input on what's being covered, and they are often looking bigger picture than the journalist. Game story is a different animal, but that's not in the scope of what we're discussing right now.

Now, what defines something that is important? I only worked in Syracuse, so I can't tell you how decisions are made at a national level (and national level really drives a lot of news). But theoretically and at it's most basic form, reporting is about relaying information that has a major impact on many people. COVID, obviously, is a major story national story, which means it's covered with local angles in town. People being tired of hearing about it doesn't really factor in - the journalist is trained to be objective and focus on what is important. (Not here to debate journalistic objectivity. All journalists have biases, but from personal experience I was too busy and too tired all of the time to try and sneak my biases on the air.)

As for giving the audience what they want - this is researched to death. That's why local news has weather 4 times in a 30 minute newscast. News websites can see what their most popular stories are, and usually lean into that.

In summary, the lack of actual football talk is because everything is weird, and as much as it sucks and I'm sure the beat writers don't like it either, it's impossible to avoid COVID stories right now.