regular reporting and because the same ideas and necessities
of news values govern the sporting pages, athletic stories follow, in
general, the usual news story form.

One may expect to find under the head of sports almost any news that is
any way connected with college, amateur, or professional athletics. The
stories include accounts of baseball and football games, rowing, horse
racing, track meets, boxing, and many other forms of sport, as well as
any discussions or movements growing out of these sports. Many of the
stories are only a few lines in length while others may cover a column
or more. But in general each one has a lead which answers the questions
_when?_ _where?_ _how?_ _who?_ and _why?_ and runs along much like an
ordinary news story. For, after all, even athletic stories are written
to attract and to hold the reader's interest whether or not he is
directly interested in the sport under discussion. Any reporter who is
called upon to cover an athletic event is safe in writing his story in
the usual news story form.

As it would be impossible to discuss all the various stories that come
under the head of athletic news, the reporting of college football games
will be taken as typical of the others. The rules that are suggested for
the reporting of football games may be applied to baseball games, track
meets, and other sporting events. The same principles govern all of
them and the stories usually summarize results in about the same way.
Football stories may be divided into three general classes: the brief
summary story of a stickful or a trifle more; the usual football story
of a half column or less; and the long story that may be run through a
column or more, depending upon the importance of the game.

All three of these stories are alike in the general facts which they
contain; they differ only in the number of minor details which they
include in the elaboration of these general facts. Each one tells in the
first sentence what teams were competing, the final score, when and
where the game was played, and perhaps some striking feature of the
game--the weather, the conditions of the field, the star players, or a
sensational score. After that, with more or less expansion, each of the
stories gives the essential things that the reader wants to know about
the game. These consist usually of the way in which the scoring was
done, a comparison of the playing of the teams, a list of the star
players, the weather c