Mile High Sports Magazine February 2010 : Page 55
BACK ON THE BEAT At first glance, there is little difference between the life veteran sportswriter B.G. Brooks currently is leading and the one he had roughly 12 months ago. Brooks is a seemingly omnipresent figure at the University of Colorado, an even- headed reporter diligent in his duties in chronicling all things CU. Brooks frequently huddles with his laptop in the Folsom Field press box, or courtside at the Coors Events Center, or even in some quiet alcove of the Dal Ward Center, typing speedily in order to get the latest travails of the Buffaloes out to their dedicated fans. The routine is old hat to Brooks, who has been toting his pen and notepad around the CU sports beat since 1987. The only thing that has changed is who is signing the checks for the right to publish Brooks’ expertise. Few folks in the Rocky Mountain News sports department enjoyed a longer or more diverse career at the newspaper than Brooks. A 31-year veteran of the Rocky, Brooks was among the publication’s countless employees left to wonder what he would do with a world of experience in a dying industry. Then, the University of Colorado, which Brooks was not reluctant to criticize in Rocky editorials whenever the situation seemed warranted, approached Brooks with a surprising offer. Suddenly, Brooks was back at his old job, playing a small part in a growing trend that may prove to be a beacon of the future for sports journalists. In late June, Brooks had just completed a stint at Metro State – teaching journalism in a job he was trying to reconcile might be how he was destined to spend the remainder of his career. Then, he received a call from CU athletic director Mike Bohn and, after a series of meetings with Bohn and Dave Plati, CU’s longtime sports information director, Brooks was hired by the very institution he dissected for more than two decades in the pages of the Rocky Mountain News. Officially bearing the title of “Contributing Editor” to the Buffaloes’ athletic web site (CUBuffs.com), Brooks contributes countless game stories, analytical pieces and athlete profiles to the site. It is a type of union that is gaining prominence not only locally but nationally, as well – enlisting the help of experienced journalists with thousands of bylines under their belt to bolster the web content of athletic organizations. The Nuggets made a similar move prior to the season, hiring former Rocky Mountain News sportswriter Aaron Lopez to improve the content at Nuggets.com. “I did teach half of last spring semester at Metro and I thought that would be what I fell into,” Brooks said. “Before the Rocky closed, Mike Bohn came to me one night in January (of 2009) at a basketball game and said, ‘It’s too bad we don’t know what’s going on in the paper; keep in touch.’ I got back to him after it closed and he said, ‘We’re looking to upgrade the content on our web site.’ I just stayed in touch until it all came to a head in late June. “My duties are very similar to my duties at the News. I really feel fortunate to have landed in this. If you can move into something that really doesn’t require a lot of upheaval or training, you can’t help but feel fortunate.” Not long ago, institutions like the CU athletic department or the Nuggets would have been hard pressed to consider hiring a member of “the enemy.” But as the reliance upon the Internet has grown more prominent, with fans flocking in greater and greater numbers to official team sites for news and information, often those same fans have only uncovered disappointment. With some exceptions, the bulk of the content on most such sites has traditionally been maintained by journalism students or entry-level employees with little, if any, field experience as reporters. By hiring professional journalists to provide that content instead, fans not only can read the sort of clean, concise copy they might find in a newspaper, but they can be assured that a bona fide expert is providing the information on their favorite team. don’t want me to lose all my objectivity.” - B . B oo - B.G. Brooks Dave P fortunate that Mike Boh “I’m Unfortunately, the slow demise of the newspaper industry has left pro and college teams with many journalists to choose from and there are several, in addition to Brooks and Lopez, who have moved to the other side of the fence, working for the organizations they once covered. o n and e Plati e The Big 12 Conference web site (big12sports.com) features the writing of former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram writer Wendell Barnhouse. Chicago Tribune scribe Skip Myslenski has become a regular contributor to Northwestern University’s athletics site, and the University of New Mexico hired former Albuquerque Tribune writer Richard Stevens after that publication folded in 2008. It is a model that Major League Baseball has adhered to for years – using experienced beat journalists to cover teams with newspaper-like scrutiny. While such endeavors are not free of questions regarding journalistic integrity, Brooks and Lopez both admit they have more freedom than they first anticipated, but still are not as free to be as unabashedly critical as they might have been at the Rocky. Baseball, nonetheless, has been ahead of the curve in utilizing traditional journalism to boost the quality of its online content. “When newspapers close, it offers more of a market to hire writers that you don’t really have to train,” Lopez said. “Moves like this will be a natural progression. If teams want more content on their web sites, if they want their sites to be a greater news source, this is a more natural fit. MLB, has treated its teams like the rest of the media in those markets, and I think they gained a lot of credibility with the way they have put that together.” Brooks was hired by the Rocky Mountain News in 1978 to help cover the Broncos. For the next 10 years, he bounced between milehighsports. com FEBRUARY 2010 55
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