How many ways can you write this story? (pigskin edition)
Do you know how many press credentials were issued for the Super Bowl this year?
More than 6,000.
Related question: Have you ever second-guessed whether to write about a topic because someone else already wrote about it?
Think about how many Super Bowl storytellers that is, all swarming into the same football stadium for the same event. Thousands of print, TV, radio, and online outlets covering the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles (The Chiefs won, 38-35).
The players throw the ball, they catch the ball, they sometimes kick the ball, they tackle each other. And the team that scores the most points wins.
Six-thousand press credentials for that.
Because it’s much more than throw, catch, score, isn’t it?
Let’s focus on the writers. You know what none of those reporters did? Toss their press pass into the trash and throw up their hands in defeat, giving up because someone else was writing about the same topic. No writer went, “Screw it. Look how many other people are here, covering the same thing.”
No. They looked for their angle. And even when their angle overlapped with another outlet’s, each writer knew that football fans would read multiple stories about the same game. They also vowed to write their story better than the competition writes theirs. Maybe they’d be more insightful, more detailed, provide better color.
Every reporter also had a plan. They knew their audience, their story’s theme, the background leading up to the game. Then it was a matter of filling in details and adjusting as needed on the fly. They worked all of this out with their editors back in the newsroom.
What do I mean by angle? Here’s a sampling of hundreds of possible stories:
There’s breaking news, the cut-and-dry “What happened?” of the event.
The Philadelphia outlets were after good Philly angles, the Kansas City outlets were looking for KC angles, the outlets in Arizona (where the game was hosted) were looking for theirs.
It was the first Super Bowl to feature two Black starting quarterbacks.
Two brothers played, one on each team. (Who would their mother approach first afterwards? Answer: the son whose team lost.)
With 96 players, there are dozens of feature story possibilities. Same with the coaching staff, the athletic trainers, and other staff.
Speaking of athletic trainers, what’s been the mindset of sideline medical crews after seeing a player suffer a cardiac arrest during a game just a few weeks earlier? (Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills collapsed after a tackle during a game on Jan. 2 and was given CPR on the field. He survived, spent nine days in hospitals, and made an appearance at the game on Sunday.)
The commercials, which have become a watch party in and of themselves.
Ditto for the halftime show.
And on it goes.
The best reporters have a plan along with the ability to adjust quickly. The same goes for you and your book.
Find your angle and go in with a stated objective. Be ready to course correct. Have an editor backing you up (and maybe a coach along the way).
And if you start to doubt yourself because you’re afraid the topic has been done before?
Visualize the Super Bowl press box and get over it.
