Narrative Analysis of Football Reports in a Finland-Swedish Daily Newspaper

Abstract

In the summer of 2000, I began my career as a freelance sports reporter for the regional newspaper Vasabladet. I was to report the local Second Division matches. It was the first time I had written anything that was to be published, and being nervous, I asked advice from more experienced sport reporters, i.e. my father. The advice was as follows: "Remember that the text should be easy to read, and write about the things your readers are interested in!" I wasn't told exactly how that was to come about, but in order to find out what the readers might be interested in, I flicked through some match reports that had been published earlier in the newspaper. Having read football reports before, I was familiar with the style and terminology involved, with words like "canons" and "last ditch tackle". Reading these texts keeping the question "how" in mind, I recognised certain tendencies I had not previously been aware of. Most striking were the similarities in form and content, which had gone unnoticed earlier. The same basic pattern in nearly all: first, the result, followed by the match details, and finally interviews and future prospects – sometimes overlapping, but always presented in this order.