Brought on by sheer frustration and too little time to bicker about strict media protocols, The Echo will be effectively cutting the sports section down from two pages to one.
This has been my first and only semester as The Echo’s sports editor and I must say that having a section downsized by an entire page looks pretty bad on my part.
But I assure you, the blame sits squarely on the shoulders of media relations in UCA’s athletic department and their limit on our accessibility — as student reporters — to student-athletes.
The death of the sports section started when reporters were turned away by players they tried to interview on the volleyball team, who were told they could no longer talk to us. Instead, players referred us to Coach John Newberry, who was willing to lend us a quote or two at first, but eventually stopped talking to us.
This limitation was seemingly unrelated to our new stipulations on media interaction, but I count it as the beginning of the end.
I truly hoped that The Echo and the volleyball team would eventually kiss and make up, but in the meantime, volleyball was effectively cut from our coverage.
It only took a week or so before writers were coming to me about being referred to media relations when they approached any student-athlete for an interview.
Given these students have a first amendment right to talk to us, people behind the scenes telling them they can’t was a serious overreach of authority.
Nobody on The Echo staff is too dumb to understand the importance of media relations. While it seems a bit silly that we have to ask someone’s permission to talk to someone the same age as us, we came to terms with it.
What becomes overlooked when our reporters cover these stories is their student status. If this was our sole responsibility each day and we weren’t full-time students, we’d have more than enough time to leap through hoops for a two-sentence quote on how the game went.
As the sports editor, it feels like my responsibility to have mitigated the difficulty our writers feel when covering games. But I, as well, am already too overwhelmed with outside responsibilities to have a heart-to-heart with even one person in a given week.
As is, the sports section finds a very hard time getting stories taken. With a sizable roadblock like this, nobody bothers to try.
That’s why this will be the last time you see a two-page sports section for the foreseeable future. I hope this doesn’t put a strain on our relationship with the Farris Center — I always assumed that building was our hot spot for sports readership.
While people like my assistant sports editor, Gabe White, do a phenomenal job with game coverage, The Echo has to cater to its strengths.
Gabe will take over the sports editor position while I move on to associate editor next semester. I’m hopeful that his good-natured disposition will aid in future sports coverage and allow The Echo to return to casual quote-sourcing.
If not, there will always be Conway High School to fill the sports page’s gaps.