Sports Media Guide - Interview with Greg Logan
January 31st, 2007 by murph
Sports Media Guide, a site that professes to “Exploring the art and craft of sports coverage” has an interview with Islanders beat writer Greg Logan now online. It’s a good read with a little behind the scenes look at covering the Islanders for Newsday.
Q. How would you describe the Islanders beat?
A. Like any other beat – it’s covering games and practices and all the news generated by the beat. It has a couple of differences. One, because the profile of the team and the team’s attendance has gone way down since the Stanley Cup years in the early 80s I am the only beat writer who travels with the team on the road. Newsday and the Daily News both staff home games, and occasionally the Post and Times will send someone to cover home games.
But basically I am the only one with the Islanders on a daily basis. Even though you would think that would be an ideal situation for a beat writer to have a minimal amount of competition only at home I still feel the responsibility to cover the news in the same competitive way I would on another beat with several competing reporters. I’m still always trying to focus on the heart of the story and any controversial angles that might come up.
In some ways there’s an even greater pressure on me – I have to ask all the tough questions. I don’t get to share that with anybody – even the radio and TV people wait for me to ask the questions, and they feed off those because they don’t want to be in a position of challenging anyone.
