Beat Journal #6

The last time I did a beat journal about the Beavers playing the northern California schools, I looked at the coverage in the local commercial newspapers and ESPN.com. This time, I decided to look at the student papers (including The Daily Barometer) and their coverage of what turned out to be another weekend sweep for the Beavers.
First, last Thursday the Beavers beat Stanford 66-54. They were in control the whole game, led by 17 in the first half and really never looked back. The game was almost the same script as the last time they played back in January.
The coverage from the Stanford Daily was a bit amateur, but not horrible. The first thing that got me though was the fact that the accompanying photo for the game was not actually from the game. It was from a Stanford-Cal game, I know because you can actually see the Cal player that’s defending Stanford’s Anthony Goods.
I understand that they wanted to feature Goods because he’s a senior and one of their best players. But, if you don’t have a photo of him from the game you are reporting on then it’s time to look in a different direction with your accompanying photo. That’s just one man’s opinion.
Additionally, there wasn’t a single quote from any Beavers players or coaches in the article. That stuns me. I know it’s the Stanford newspaper, but a little neutrality in quotes would be nice.
The Daily Cal did a much better job of covering the Beavers 65-54 win over Cal on Saturday. They included multiple quotes from both teams and coaches and – I thought – did a very professional job of covering the game and it’s ramifications for both teams.
Having no photo at all is a big downer though. I would say that I fall on the Daily Cal’s side of the “no photo or photo of another game” question. Maybe they didn’t have any photos to use and decided, unlike the Stanford Daily, to not run one at all. If that’s the case then I believe they made the right decision.
However, from my experience just at the LBCC paper as the editor I know that colleges usually work together to trade photos since we don’t normally have budgets that allow our reporters to travel to road games. That may have been an avenue they didn’t explore.
As far as the Daily Barometer goes, they failed to place a photo as well. The story that Terry Horstman wrote was not bad, and it centered around both the fact that it was senior day and the fact that the Beavers swept the season series from both bay area schools. It was informative but not great.