Kat Cornetta

Sports writer - Grant writer

Category: writing (Page 1 of 3)

Want To Get Away?

21 December, 2011 /

The awesome thing about working in education is having the week off between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Bragtastic, I know, but the older I get, the more I relish the time.

Last intersession, I was stuck in my apartment recovering from an awful case of bacterial bronchitis and its complications. I used that week to sit on my couch and write for hours on end. I produced one of my best received pieces ever during that week (Boston Hosted The Last Tuesday NFL Game, In 1946) and got to cover the the New England Patriots being stuck in my hometown of Rochester, NY after a snowstorm interrupted their travel back to Massachusetts (Snow Way and Patriots Trying To Get Back to Foxboro).

I love using my intersession week off to be a full-time writer – it’s the only time in the year I get to do so. With that in mind and no crazy bronchitis this year to derail me, I’m using the intersession again to write away. But I can’t possibly just sit in my apartment. I would go stir crazy. I have tentative plans for Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday I’m working for the Boston Herald. But Thursday is wide open.

Thus, I’m offering my services to cover any college hockey game in New England on Thursday, December 29th, free of charge (unless you want to pay me, then of course, I’d take payment.) I want to travel, and someone has to need a college hockey writer. Right? Right. Consider it my holiday present to the college hockey world.

Here is some work I’ve done covering college hockey in the past. I haven’t had the opportunity to cover much this season because of my full-time job, so that’s why I would love to cover a game on the 29th.
College Hockey Notebook: Andrew Glass, Wahsontiio Stacey Departures Have Fans Shaking Their Heads
College Hockey Notebook: Da Costa, Dumoulin Lead Hockey East’s Top Sophomores
Hockey East Tournament Coverage

Let me know if you’re interested by emailing me at sportsgirlkat AT gmail.com

Why Are Grantland and Deadspin Obsessed With The Men’s Magazine Model? (Or, Is Long-Form Cultural Rambling The Only “Respectable” Journalism?)

16 October, 2011 /

In late September, I put the higher ed administrator hat away for a hot second and geeked out at Blogs With Balls, the seminal national conference on new sports media.

BWB4 appropriately featured panelists from Grantland and an entire panel about Deadspin. I qualified that with “appropriately” because deep down inside, writers at both publications have all have achieved the pinnacle of every insomniac sports blogger – they make a living writing both ridiculous and serious sports nuggets. (Also, they can wear jeans and faux faded vintage sports tees to work.)

In the Deadspin panel, amongst the discussion of Brett Favre and his privates, there was a discussion of Deadspin‘s long form, non-sports specific work. And within that (all too brief) discussion, Deadspin editor AJ Daulerio mentioned that they want to find a place for that “men’s magazine” style of writing. He specifically called out “men’s magazines,” and didn’t just say “long-form.”

During the first week of October, Grantland announced a collaboration with humor publication McSweeney’s to offer a “best of” compilation entitled Grantland Quarterly. The topics covered will span sports, entertainment and social commentary. Readers will be able to subscribe to a year worth of the publication, or order individual copies for $19.95. Each issue will be edited by site founder Bill Simmons and former GQ editor Dan Fierman, and will include a few print-only exclusives. In a quote to the New York Observer, Fierman says,

“If our site has a problem it’s that we move so fast that readers miss stuff,” he said. The print journal serves up the site’s greatest hits in a medium better suited to long-form journalism.”

Continue reading

The Four Things Writers/Higher Education Administrators Must Have (and my Yahoo! contest)

15 September, 2011 /

I present to you the four things I have become completely reliant on in my quest to pursue two careers at once:

Four things all writers must have.

Me, caffinated.

Coffee (preferably Dunkin Donuts), my iPhone, good eye makeup and a physical, old school paper notebook. The iPhone serves as my audio recorder and long commute multi-tasker. The notebook because there are still times it is quicker to write in longhand, plus it holds all of my to-do lists. The eye makeup helps me not look like a crazed zombie, and the coffee is pretty self-explanatory.

Thus, my silence here is understandable. Between move-in at work and a plethora of writing assignments, I am engaging in mega-prioritization.

One of those writing (well, kind of writing, more social media) assignments is that I have been named a Yahoo! Trending Insider. A few weeks back, I entered a contest to find one of Yahoo’s most influential users, and I was named a finalist. I was whisked away to a day of training, and am now in the midst of the contest…of which I am losing badly.

This was to be expected in the first two weeks of the contest. Student move in at my full time job was going to be my handicap, plus the fact that I had every single writing assignment ever assigned to me due in the same week. But I am ready and willing to make up for lost ground.

How does it work? I’m supposed to share Yahoo’s trending content via my social networks. Thus, I give you a link, and you click on it and read it. Now, I won’t link to every piece of trending content, given that I know my audience doesn’t turn to me for “Scarlett Johansson cell phone pictures.” (But if you do, here’s a link to Yahoo’s story on that, so please click on that so I get points.) I’ll try to pick content that is trending that you might actually be interested in. I’ll link to it here, on Twitter, Facebook and Google +. The links will be tagged #YInsider or say “I’m an Insider!”

So click on the links, and let’s see if I can make up for lost ground. The contest ends during the first week of October. They will name a top five – my modest goal is just to crack the top five. Right now, I’m in the bottom three. If I lose, oh well. I got a lot of great stuff from the contest already (like a yodeling Yahoo button and a night in a swanky hotel), and I am already flattered just being included in the top nine.

Now let me get back to my students, my coffee and checking off to-dos like Buffalo Bills QB Ryan Fitzpatrick checked off touchdowns last Sunday against Kansas City. It was like a Oprah giveaway. “Scott Chandler, you’re getting a touchdown. CJ Spiller, you’re getting a touchdown. Stevie Jackson, you’re getting a touchdown. YOU’RE ALL GETTING TOUCHDOWNS!”

——————————-

And now, here’s the legal fun!

“I have been selected to be a Yahoo! Trending Now Insider!  For the next six weeks, Yahoo! will be providing me with exclusive trending content, which I will be sharing with all of you.”

The New Sportswriter Will Travel A Long Road To Get There

30 August, 2011 /

Covering the Women's Beanpot at Boston College in Feb. 2011I am a religious reader of music critic Bob Lefsetz. To use the old Simpsons quote, I am intrigued by his views and actually subscribe to his newsletter (called The Lefsetz Letter.) One quote from his most recent newsletter on Jared Leto and his band 30 Seconds to Mars jumped out at me. It has so much cross over to the world of new sports media.

Said Lefsetz:

“Despite the prevalence of prepubescents, our rock stars are going to be older and older, because not only does it take that long to get noticed, but it takes that long to be good.”

Is this the way writing – in particular sports writing – is going?

Is writing becoming something you need to dabble in part time before you can make a sustainable living doing it? Is the new sports journalist the 29 year old who has had a blog for years, balanced writing with a non-writing full-time career, and eventually cobbles together enough to fashion a full-time living from it?

That’s both the rub and the reward of the Internet, online media and the growth of blogging. It gives those of us who dreamed of writing for a living but were discouraged and confused a second chance. But it widens the pool of writers, making things difficult for those who devoted schooling, internships and low paying police/fire newspaper beats to their craft.

Who is the new sports media member? Is it the nearly-30 blogger who tries their best to emulate the writers who inspire him or her, or is it the writer with the print journalism degree who took a more traditional path? Who will be the sportswriter of the future?

In this new media world, are sportswriters going to be much older when they finally, to quote Lefsetz, “get noticed” and “be good”?

What Sports Bloggers Can Learn From John Mayer About Twitter

24 July, 2011 /
John Mayer 3

John Mayer at Berklee on July 11, 2011. (Photo: Berklee College of Music)

I recently read coverage of singer/songwriter John Mayer’s July 11th lecture at his alma mater, Berklee College of Music. Mayer returned to his Boston music school to share his ups and downs musically and with his celebrity.

Mayer touched upon his once obsessive use of Twitter, which he eventually had to abandon. Berklee Blogs reported from the lecture:

“(Mayer struggled) to curb using social media, which should have been an outlet for promotion but eventually became an outlet for artistic expression. Mayer shared that he found himself asking himself questions like ‘Is this a good blog? Is this a good tweet? Which used to be, is this a good song title? Is this a good bridge?’

And possibly more alarming, Mayer realized that pouring creativity into smaller, less important, promotional outlets like Twitter not only distracted him from focusing on more critical endeavors like his career, it also narrowed his mental capacity for music and writing intelligent songs.”

Most telling was this direct quote from Mayer:

“I stopped using Twitter as an outlet and I started using Twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

Even though I’m tone deaf, Mayer’s insights regarding Twitter hit home for me as a sports writer. I devote so much of my time engaging my sports communities via Twitter, and having worthy and in-depth conversations there. I’m using ideas and thoughts on Twitter that might be better explored via my sports blog.

It is an easy rut for sports bloggers to get stuck in. You leave some of your best material – the discussion of a player’s role on a particular team, a discussion of how you would set hockey lines, who you would hire for a vacant coaching position – on Twitter. You might not even realize you are putting your creativity priority on Twitter, but step back and look at what discussions you’re spending a lot of time having on Twitter. You might be leaving a lot of topics there that you could be having on your blog.

Remember that even though Twitter has exploded with popularity, not all of your blog readers are there. Consider about expanding on topics you’re discussing on Twitter on your blog. Or write about a topic first on your blog, then share the blog post via Twitter and let the post generate the discussion. By putting your blog as creativity priority one over Twitter, you may not run into difficulty finding time to post or coming up with post ideas.

Start by asking yourself: Are you using your blog or Twitter to “riff” on sports? Is whatever one you’re using the one you want to be using?

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