Imua+project

=**THERE WILL BE NO //IMUA// PROJECT IN 2017.**= =For your edification, Mrs. Swanson's journalism guide is below anyway.= _ ** Literature of Sport **

Journalism writing guide from Mrs. Swanson, former //Imua// adviser Tips for //Imua// sportswriters:

** Finished articles should be e-mailed as Word attachments to ** **__ iolaniimua@gmail.com __** Include in the subject line the article topic and make sure your REAL NAME is in the attachment.

Sports articles in //Imua// fall into two basic categories: spot news and sports features. Take a look at the // Star -// //Advertiser// sports sections for examples of both.

** SPOT NEWS: ** Included in spot news are any articles about specific games, meets or tournaments. The most important part of a spot news articles is the lead, or first sentence. It should include the most important thing about the game, and it should tell that important news in the most interesting way possible.

The lead should **NOT** begin with - the date the game took place - the score, unless it was really unusual

The lead should let the reader know that the reporter actually witnessed the event and didn’t just write about it based on other people’s accounts.

Sometimes the most important thing doesn’t have a lot to do with the outcome of the game. For example, the ‘Iolani football team traveled to Tacoma, Wash., last month to play a mainland team, the Capitals. ‘Iolani lost the game. But the most important thing was that they came back from a huge deficit to within three points of their opponents, whose front line looked like the nearby Cascade mountain range. That would be one way to lead the article: // Playing in the shadow of a mountain range that resembled their opponents’ front line, the ‘Iolani Raiders came within three points of victory after a fourth-quarter rally in their Washington state game last week. // Follow with a quote from an ‘Iolani player. THEN follow with the score and the details of the game.

Make sure you’re watching for the story as it unfolds. If the game is lackluster but a shortage of spam musubi creates a riot at the snack bar, that’s your article. Who remembers the score of the Super Bowl two years ago? The story was Janet Jackson and the halftime show.

** SPORTS FEATURES: ** Sports features can include analysis, profiles, trend articles – basically any sports stories that don’t simply recount a single sporting event. Rick Reilly’s columns are sports features. Player of the month is a sports feature. Many newspapers, including //Imua//, are including more sports features than spot news. The reality is that most people get their scoreboard information from TV, which can cover the visual part of sports so much better than newspapers can.

For a feature, you still need to include important information in the lead. Make it catchy.

Suggestions for sports feature articles: **- Where-are-they-now stories**. The Advertiser had a well written profile of (Derek) D-Low last week. Follow up on recent grads and give Imua readers an update. Get in touch with Joleen “Joleen Would Go” Oshiro, maybe. **- Trend stories. Some ideas**: In looking through 1985 //Imuas//, we found an article in which some alumni decried the admission of girls to ‘Iolani’s kindergarten, fearing that admitting 50 percent girls would cut the available slots for football and male basketball players. Follow up – call some of those guys. Class of ’08 has a cluster of football players who have been a team for a very long time. They would make a great trend article.

** NON-STORIES: ** Some stories probably won’t make it into the paper. These include - //First person stories about a specific game.// If you play a sport and you want to write about it, don’t write about a specific event. Write instead about the life of a volleyball player. Include stuff “civilians” wouldn’t know. Do you eat weird foods? Some coach a few years ago started having his players drink pickle juice instead of Gatorade during games, claiming it helped their electrolyte balances better. What’s it like during the off-season for your sport? Sometimes that becomes the best part of the story. Olympic gold medal speed skater Eric Heiden took to the Wisconsin ice as a winter cross training opportunity for what was then his primary sport, bicycle racing. - //Old news.// If you cover a game three weeks before //Imua// comes out, chances are your excellently written article won’t make the cut. Make sure spot news covers events in the two or three days before the deadline. - //Stories with no local angle.// If you cover Freddie Adu’s trip to the Waikiki Niketown, it’s local news. If you cover his marriage to one of the Bush twins, it’s not.

** One final tip: ** Communicate with the //Imua// editors. Or let me know of any questions or concerns you have. I hang around in Nangaku 204, 205. You can also reach me at kswanson@iolani.org. Good luck and many thanks!

** Finished articles should be e-mailed as Word attachments to ** ** __iolaniimua@gmail.com__. **