News writing: how to write a sports report in 4 steps

The news writing style is just as important for sports reporting as it is for general news, business stories, or any other journalistic work.

The advantage of sports writing is that you are allowed a little more freedom in word choice. In crime or business writing, you are restricted from using adjectives and adverbs and encouraged to focus more on nouns and verbs.

However, sports writing allows you to go into town by describing the plays, atmosphere, fans, and other colorful aspects of a sporting event.

For this article, we will go through, step by step, how to write a simple sports report using quotes.

Ideally, any sports story would have quotes from winners and losers. In fact, many sports articles are written around what athletes say rather than what they have accomplished on the field of play.

However, it also has sports articles written without quotes. When newbies learn to write like a journalist, especially in sports, they are likely to come across the structure that we will show you here.

We will adapt the NBA game between the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers on April 1 as our sample article.

1. Introduction: The most important news aspect of a sports game is the score. Who won? How did they win and what effect did the victory have? It is also important whether we write from the perspective of Boston or from Cleveland. In this case, we will go to Cleveland.

“The Cleveland Cavaliers lost 98-96 to the Boston Celtics after Delonte West sank two free throws in the closing seconds, falling three and a half games behind the Pistons for the best record in the Eastern Conference.”

2. More information – The above is sufficient for those who have a passing interest in the sport. However, NBA fans would want more information and you could give it to them in a paragraph or two.

“The Cavaliers did not have star player LeBron James, who suffered from a knee injury, while the Celtics lost Paul Pierce. Gerald Green led the way for the Celtics with 25 points, while Kendrick Perkins had 12 points and nine rebounds.

The Cavaliers, for whom Larry Hughes scored 24 points and Sasha Pavlovic scored 17, have already qualified for the play-offs while Boston is out of the game. “

3. Quote – This is where you can provide a quote from the coach or a key player from both teams. You can precede each saying with an introductory paragraph or go directly to the quote.

Celtic forward Al Jefferson said: “They were missing their best player and we missed our best play. We just stayed there.”

Cavs coach Mike Brown said James’s absence was a key factor in his loss.

We miss LeBron. We miss LeBron every time he doesn’t play. He’s our man, ‘said Brown.

4. The rest: Once you have obtained the main information and key quotes, you can continue describing the game. Even better would be to describe just one or two works and include more quotes.

The thinking behind sporting goods is that people would have seen the game on TV anyway and wouldn’t want a boring description of the game. Therefore, quotes from important people, such as athletes and coaches, would offer better reading value.

There are many types of sports news writing offered around the world every day. We have simply shown you its simplest form. It is certainly a rewarding form of news writing for journalists who love their sport. And the structure they use allows them to adapt their skills to any type of journalistic writing.

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