Film: A day in the life of sports reporting

[INTRO MUSIC]

 

>> ANNA : I'm Anna Edwards.

And I'm the sportswomen producer at Sky Sports News HQ.

 

>> SAM : Hi, my name is Sam Wallace.

I'm the chief football writer of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

 

>> ANNA : We're a channel that's 24 hours and 7 days a week,

so there's lots of time

to fill with lots of exciting sport and stories.

So I look after all the women sports side of things.

 

>> SAM : Seven days a week, newspaper and online, we're covering football,

primarily English clubs all across Europe and the world.

 

>> ANNA : I'm in at my desk for 7:00,

and then I start working through our rundown

with the sportswomen team.

Then, at 11:30, we're live with our co-producers, graphics,

and our director, and people in charge of our cameras.

We then do lots of different things on Facebook

and we write up articles for online.

 

>> SAM : About nine o'clock every morning,

we talk about how we think the paper is that day,

how we've done, what the other newspapers have,

and what we need to be focusing on

and there might be things that they need me to do during the day

for our website

and to follow

whatever breaking news stories there are that day.

And then, for example,

I could be going to a game in the evening

that could be anywhere in the country.

I could drive up to Liverpool, or Manchester, or over to Wembley.

We would have to write a report on the match

that is ready to be sent back to my office to be printed

as the game itself finishes.

 

>> ANNA : I think a good sports producer is somebody who can work as a team,

who is a good leader,

who can bring lots of different elements together.

So a producer doesn't just write scripts,

but they work with sound, they work with cameras,

they work with makeup, graphic designers,

they have to coordinate everything.

 

>> SAM : We have to be able to write very quickly,

that's a skill which is very, very important

to be accurate and to be clear and concise.

You also need to be a good reader

because there may be times

when you're reporting on something

and you're given a very big document

and you have to read through that

and decide in a short space of time what the most important thing is.

We have to be able to write really, really quickly

so we can take down people's speech as they say it,

so we have a skill called shorthand which we're all taught.

 

 

>> ANNA : It's all about communicating,

so reading and writing skills, every aspect of my job,

I could not do it without those skills.

From writing scripts to you know, explaining a story,

you know, how to construct a letter,

how to write a letter properly,

how to write an email properly,

how to represent yourself.

 

>> SAM : I wanted to be a journalist

because I was always interested in newspapers.

They were always around my house when I was growing up.

It's an opportunity to write, which I enjoy doing,

but it's also a chance to meet people,

to travel, and to try and find out interesting things,

and they're all part of a newspaper journalist's life.

 

>> ANNA : It's the unpredictability, and being live,

you don't really know what's gonna happen next,

so it's really exciting.

 

>> SAM : There's still deadlines,

there's still lots of pages to fill,

there's still good days and bad days,

there's pressure,

and there's times when it can be very, very rewarding as well.

 

>> ANNA : Using words to express yourself and your story

and being creative with those words is quite exciting.

 

 

>> SAM : There's no better feeling

than going into your local news agents

at the end of your street

and buying the paper

when you feel you've done a really good job that day

and seeing it there.

 

[OUTRO MUSIC]