The Game is Changing

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well that I have an incredible passion for sports. I live, eat, breathe and sleep sports. My friends and family can tell you that I have an uncanny ability to remember statistics, names, numbers, dates, games and plays from great sports moments. In my opinion, there is nothing greater than watching (or even better, attending) a college football or basketball game. The passion, intensity and rivalry is unmatched in any other live event you can ever go to. With that in mind, I can still vividly recall a spectacular play that I saw a young Michigan State wide receiver named Charles Rogers make against Notre Dame in 2002.

It is still regarded as one of the best catches of the decade, and it is probably still to this day the best catch I have seen on live TV. When I saw that play, the only thing going through my mind was that this kid was going to be one of the best receivers of his generation. It is now seven years later and I hadn't heard a single word about Charles Rogers since his second season in the NFL in 2004. Obviously, when I came across this story from ESPN's outstanding show, Outside the Lines, about the rise and fall of Charles Rogers, I was hooked. I had no idea what had caused this young man who once had shown such incredible promise to fall completely off the face of the map. The story that Jemele Hill put together did a fantastic job of painting that picture for me.

Her piece was called "Lion Flub" and I think it is an excellent example of where journalism is headed today. It includes a very detailed print story describing Rogers' rise in high school and college leading to his great hype as an NFL rookie. I thought she did a wonderful job of painting the picture of a young man who had experienced some trouble in his past (i.e. fathering two children in high school and having two marijuana violations at Michigan State) but whose future looked so incredibly bright. Despite the problems of his past, everyone including Rogers thought that there was nothing that could stand in his way once he made it to the NFL. Well, it turns out that everyone was wrong, and Hill did a masterful job of setting the scene for those high expectations followed by such overwhelming dissapointment.

Although the written piece was fairly long already, I would have liked it if Hill had gone into more detail in chronocling Rogers' troubled past. While I believe it was important to show that no one seemed to make a big deal out of his youthful mistakes at the time in order to allow the reader to grasp the mindset of Rogers and those surrounding him as he entered the NFL, I found myself wondering why it was never explained how or why Rogers had two children before he graduated high school. Or why he subsequently had two more children with the same woman and then ended their relationship abruptly. Or why he apparently had three more children with other women (it was never explained how many women or when the children were born). Besides his questionable responsibilities as a father and a man, I also wondered why the story never gave any details about his two early marijuana violations while he was at Michigan State. Obviously at the time no one thought it was a serious problem, but it turns out that he became addicted to prescription pain killers, alcohol and marijuana just a few short years later. Why had no one stepped in? Why wasn't his previous drug abuse monitored more closely to make sure it didn't become a problem? These are some questions I wanted answers to that the story never provided.

The reason I said earlier that Hill's work is a great example of where the field of journalism is headed today is that in addition to writing a long and detailed print story, she also shot an eight-and-a-half minute video segment to complement her print piece. I say complement because most of the video is entirely unique and separate from the print story. There are several direct quotes from interviews that are used in both the video and the print version, however there is a clear distinction between the two stories. I think that video gets the point across about Rogers' failure to deliver on his great expectations as well as grasping the emotion, embarrassment and near depression that he felt during his years of drug and alcohol abuse. I read the print story first and then watched the video, and when I saw Rogers' face and body language while he was giving some of the quotes I had read earlier, it added another demention to them. I think the video version also was very strong in showing how hard Rogers is working to get back to the NFL. It is one thing to read that he is working out and pushing himself hard every day to get back to the point he was at several years ago, but when you have good video to show him sprinting, running on a treadmill, sweating, grunting and pushing himself to his physical limits it is so much more powerful.

I think Hill did a marvelous job of utilizing the strengths of each medium she chose to use for this story. In her print story, she gave lots of details and included infinitely more background information in order to set up the character and really sell the reader on the high expectations this young man once had. In the video story, she focused the story on the aspects which she had strong visuals to support her story. As a result, she spent much less time chronicling the rise of Charles Rogers and instead focused more on his downfall and subsequent attempt to rise from the ashes of a once spectacular football career. I think that Hill set a great example for all reporters looking to put together feature stories; you need to do more than simply put together a long print piece for the internet. And you also need to do more than put together a lengthy eight-and-a-half minute video segment. You have to do both, and you have to make sure that they aren't the exact same story.

If I had watched the video first and then the first three paragraphs were in effect the same as the intro to the video, I would have stopped reading immediately and moved on to more interesting things. The same goes the other way around. Instead, Hill took a singly story and told it using two different journalistic mediums, using each style's strengths to emphasize two different aspects of the same story. I think aspring journalists (and not just sports reporters) should look to pieces like this one in order to really grasp what is rapidly becoming the standard in journalistic practice today.