High school coverage: Too much?

Looking back at my early days at the Telegraph; did I overdo it?

The other day, I got a thoughtful — and surprising — note from someone who evidently was a reader back in my early days as Sports Editor for the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph back in a previous century, some 43 years ago.

While he enjoyed my reprising a column on Substack I wrote about a high school wrestler who, amazingly, reached out to me surreptitiously a year ago (He sent me the opening line of the column I wrote about him 42 years ago), my correspondent was not quite as enamored of another column I wrote that was critical of an athlete quitting in the middle of a season.

In discussing the merits of my column — and there are some — it got me to thinking did I do too much on high school sports back in those days? For most of the seven years I was Sports Editor of the Telegraph, we blew up high school sports like no other New Hampshire paper, that’s for sure, and I’d venture to say we did more with high school sports than just about any newspaper sports section I ever saw.

Was this too much for a state high school basketball championship?

At the time, we’re talking 70’s to 80’s in Southern New Hampshire and it seemed to me to be the best stuff to write about. We were about an hour from Boston, the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins and Patriots but too far to cover them on a regular basis. High school sports were fun, our coverage helped fill the gymnasiums and football fields around our area and it may have made semi-folk heroes of these high school athletes. Take a look at couple of sample Telegraph pages (I did the page layout, too, took photos…it was a small paper.)

So if you were a high school athlete of some note, there was a good chance you’d get written up in the local newspaper, maybe even recognized around town. But was that too much, too soon? Because there is always a backlash to publicity. As I wrote in my July 2 post about my horrific experience covering the Hollis-Wilton baseball clash (attached below) there’s a fine line that I evidently didn’t only cross but stomped on.

In the newsroom, I had two other guys who covered sports for me, mostly football. And we had a lot of discussions in the newsroom about how to cover the teams and the games. In my view, we were reporting on the games, that is, we weren’t openly rooting for our team with our stories. If a fumble or interception turned the tide of the game, you were supposed to report it. The way I saw it — which I think is fair — if you report about their touchdowns or 20-point games, you’re obligated to report what happens if things don’t go as smoothly. They were reluctant to do that, sometimes leaving it out of a story where it decided the game. To me, it’s Journalism vs. Public Relations, isn’t it?

In my days covering FSU, one Saturday they went up to North Carolina State and got hammered. I wrote what I saw. That Monday, FSU assistant coach Chuck Amato chestied up to me in the Atrium and asked, “I don’t get you, Nogowski. Whose side are you on?”

“I’m on MY side, Chuck,” I said. “99% of the time, you guys win and I write it. When you get slammed, well, I’m going to write that, too.”

In looking back thanks to my conversation with my former reader, I wonder now if I did too much? I wanted to cover high school sports like it was the Boston Globe. But, of course, it wasn’t the Boston Globe; these were high school kids.

Did I puff a lot of them up? Yup. Was that a good thing? I’d say yup to that, too. Having taught high school for a dozen years after my Journalism career, I can vouch that teenagers need as much encouragement and support as we can give them. And I’d like to think that for the vast majority of high school athletes I wrote about, I did just that and tried to be as fair as I could be to everybody.

If I wrote about a kid turning the ball over at a crucial point or throwing an interception or, well, quitting, it wasn’t like it didn’t happen.

Looking back on the thousands of kids I wrote about, I can truthfully say I tried my very best to be fair — I think that’s the best you can do as a journalist. Nobody is objective. Nobody can be objective. If I hit a nerve here and there, well, I think it sorta comes with the territory, doesn’t it?

So I thank my former reader for reaching out, making me look back on words I wrote so many years ago, wondering if I did the right thing then, how I’d approach it now. Maybe I’d do the same thing. Maybe not. It’s done, you can’t change it. But you can think about it. And you should.

HERE’S THE POST ABOUT THAT INFAMOUS HOLLIS-WILTON GAME