There is a scene in the TV show “The Odd Couple” where Felix and Oscar are trying to fly to Houston together to help eliminate Felix’s fear of flying. It was optimal as Oscar was going to cover a Houston vs. San Diego NFL game and they could travel together. The problem was the plane was full of skydivers who jumped off in Houston while the plane continued to San Diego. It’s a lot funnier and more detailed when you watch the episode, but the relevant point was that Oscar mentioned he would watch the game on TV from San Diego and cover it that way. Not exactly the ideal in-depth idea of journalism.
When I was with the Knicks, there was a prominent New York columnist who would come to games leave at halftime and ask us to fax him the final stats. He once said to me “It’s not exactly how Grantland Rice would have covered a game.”
Then I remember when I was at Fordham, we had a young kid who worked for the student newspaper, “The Ram,” and didn’t want to go to football games on Saturday. He preferred to watch the condensed film in the coaches off ice on Sunday and write his story off of that.
I thought of all of those things as I made my way from event to event in the first quarter of this year, not always sure of the “why” but always trying to extract something from chance meetings, speaking, and observing the goings on around me. I always try to be curious, and although there have been more than a few times recently I have questioned “why” am I spending time listening to many of the same topics, there always seems to be the “AHA” moment or encounter that justifies the time. I to be talked to many team and league communications people recently about the value of in person storytelling and what has been learned/lost/gained in the past few years, all part of the evolved experience we will have as fans and professionals as things return to play.
Now there are some that will say that the experience of “being there” has been overrated. The use of high speed video conferencing along with 5G for streaming, has eliminated some of the need for a physical body being at a conference, stadium or an arena to tell the story of what’s going on. Teams and league officials have pointed to the fact that they can reach more people more efficiently by doing a Zoom chat and providing highlights with media nowhere near a venue than they could have before all this started, when you had to pretty much be there to do your job. Slashing production budgets and rising costs for conferences also have accelerated the need and necessity to travel to events as well.
While all that contact on a screen is going to be more integrated and useful, several others talked about the fear of loss of connection as we try and find the middle for the media/celebrity/athlete storytelling relationship. It is true that social media has made a direct-to-consumer path for those with a following easier, but that doesn’t mean that a megaphone for that connection is still not needed, or that different angles to a story can always be played out just in an Insta story or a Tweet. It all still needs a bigger match to reach the widest, most impactful audience possible, an audience which may be too distracted to keep in touch with any and every message that a person in a position to have a story told can be in.
However, can anything replace the empathetic human connection that has been missing through a hug with a person you haven’t seen for a while? Or a high five? No. That is where the balance of technology, social media and good old-fashioned face to face meetings needs to be struck, and oh yes, hopefully that is an area where media as storytellers still can go at some point to witness and be able to tell that story in human terms much more easily than just watching on a screen.
The other area that we seem to sometimes forget is the vibe. The vibe and the energy that only being there can bring to amplify not just the athlete, but the storytelling as well. We are moving through March Madness, and while we will thrill to watch, what is never lost in showing up is the once in the moment shared explosion of in person emotion that comes from being there.
Now some will say these changes of how we encounter and access are all for the better. After all, we sometimes don’t really know what we are missing when its gone, and we sometimes didn’t realize that some of the “traditions” were just box checking that we held on to. One thing that can’t be underrated, even with the move to digital access, time management improvement and ease of use for data and notes, is that sports is a human business played through on emotions, and great storytellers can continue to convey those stories far and wide. Part of that, as we have mentioned before, is in the nuance, the listening, the notetaking and the relationships that build over time.
I think even Oscar Madison would have agreed there was nothing like being there to tell the story, meet the people and learn. It’s why I still like showing up, you never know who, or what, is around the corner…and you can’t find that connection, hard as you try, on a Zoom call.
Journaling Never Gets Old…