Talking Points interviewed Front Office Sports reporter Ellyn Briggs to unpack how research informs her trend-based reporting,
Talking Points writes, “As it turns out, that research background is the throughline she sees across her work today—and if you’ve read her stories, it’s not hard to tell. Her reporting is detailed, meticulous, and original, and she has a problem of speaking to ‘too many sources’ by her own admission. They are, in many cases, the types of stories that don’t ever see the light of day until someone like Briggs decides to dig into them—like how athletes are moonlighting as photographers, or how the USMNT coach’s plain blue shirt turned into a retail hit during the World Cup.
“Her beat—which she describes as how sports intersects with culture, media, and consumer behavior—is deliberately roomy. ‘Each week I’m going down a different rabbit hole that’s totally different than last week,’ she says. Those rabbit holes are wonderfully specific: how finance dealmaking paused in New York during the Knicks finals run, the viral ritual of mascots unmasking at graduation, a Boston dad adopted by Scotland’s World Cup fans, or the science behind post-game fireworks in Major League Baseball—from global supply chain management to specialized software.
“It’s not the type of work you’d expect to see from a traditional sports business outlet, but it’s becoming more common. Other media outlets, from Vanity Fair to Politico, are also paying attention to the peripheries of sports, Briggs argued recently in her reporting. Sports, in her view, is one of the last monocultures—the rare thing she and a brother of opposite worldview still share.”
Read more here.
