Dealing With the Media – from a sportswriter’s perspective

By Jim Reese
CompuSports Staff Writer

Sometimes high school football coaches get so caught up in teaching “X’s and O’s” and seeing that the field is lined and making sure the uniforms are ready for Friday or Saturday’s game, they forget about an important ingredient of their job: the assimilation and release of information to the media regarding their team.

What follows below are some rules and guidelines gathered over the years covering high school football which would enable a better level of communication between the coaches and the media to exist:

1. Coaches should not think of the press as the enemy. Newspapers have a job to do and that is to report games and tell stories. The more accurate information you give to a reporter enhances the chances of the story being both informative and factual.
2. Most reporters are professionals trying to do their job. True, some will misquote coaches and that is unfortunate. But I’ve never known a reporter to purposely try to discredit a coach with erroneous information.
   Coaches know more about football than reporters do and reporters know more about the newspaper business than coaches do. Both coaches and reporters know those facts but sometimes one side crosses over into the other’s territory and that’s where the trouble starts.
3. Make sure the reporters covering your team have your cell phone number and your e-mail address. Both coaches and reporters should answer messages left in a timely manner.
4. If an assistant coach is in charge of your stats, provide that person’s cell number and e-mail address to reporters as well.
5. Supply a team roster of name, position, height, weight, year, letters won, and school, county, or state records held, prior to the season and also have a roster available before every game. Include the names of all coaches on the staff as well as career won-loss records.
6. If items of interest arise such as outstanding scholar activity, injuries, school records broken, etc., e-mail those to the reporter covering your team.
7. Coaches should correctly assume that reporters don’t know as much about football as coaches do, but coaches should also understand reporters have been trained to spot points of interest fans enjoy.
8. Reach an understanding that there are certain times you won’t be available to talk to a reporter, such as during practice or class time.
9. Utilize e-mail as much as possible. It gets the information out in a timely manner and prevents phone-tag.
10. Trust is very important in the relationship between coaches and reporters. Reporters have burned coaches and vice versa. In the final analysis, it’s what’s best for the players that’s important. If both sides share that philosophy, trust is easily reached.

This article was written by Jim Reese. Jim was a quarterback and assistant coach at the University of Minnesota and is now retired and lives in Tampa, Florida, where he reports on sports for a local newspaper.

Learn about and download Jim’s eBook, How to Win at Flag Football