Trust is name of the game
SPORT, like news, is a perpetual motion machine. The pace of change is increasingly rapid, not just on the pitch but in the press box too.
After all, what is a sports journalist in 2017? Outstanding bloggers interrogate coaches at press conferences, long-loved fanzines have gone digital, reaching millions of readers every year and supporters are turning the cameras on themselves; democratising the games we love and presenting an unprecedented landscape to traditional media outlets.
It is a landscape in which the regional press will thrive. As sport goes global, fans – our readers – increasingly go local.
Supporters and lovers of sport crave authenticity. To be a fan is to join a community, to share a common language that transcends accents or post codes. It is our job, as the regional experts around our clubs and personalities, to generate and reflect these communities and their conversations every day.
To be trusted by the people who go to games and know our teams inside out is a great privilege. Plenty changes in sport, but that remains the same. When you see a sea of headlines about your club, looking out for the title based closest to the club in question in the best way to ensure you’re getting the real story from your clubs.
Why? Because we don’t just report on our clubs, we live and work amongst its fans too. It’s a matter of trust.
That trust has been built and sustained by, above all, superb journalism. To couple celebrating sporting success as a source of civic pride with holding to account important institutions in our towns and cities is a tightrope walked by the regional press every day.
Fake news is fly-bynight, being a fan is for life. We know what fans want because we are them ourselves. But we also know that fans want facts – no matter how much we’d all want to believe that Ronaldo is about to sign for our club. That’s what sets us apart from those organisations who just want your click. We want your trust.
Indeed, we often report on transfer rumours and gossip, but with a critical eye borne out of local knowledge, ears to the ground and great contactbuilding by our journalists. If supporters are talking about it, then so are we.
Sportsdesks can occasionally feel like islands in the newsroom. When so often the majority of the office are heading home, it is our sports journalists who are preparing for a weekend’s worth of action or a match going late into the night. The calendars change but the standards stay the same, from front page to back.
Regional sport doesn’t end with a final whistle. Our clubs are employers, local advertisers and community centres. Our sportsmen and women are so often the faces outsiders associate us with.
The sport stories we report are weaved into the daily fabric of our towns and cities. How lucky we are to tell them.