Sports writing: Once a passion, now merely a job

Once, working for an online sports section, it was immediately stressed that the rule of thumb was to churn out six articles over an eight-hour shift for studies showed quantity resulted in more hits than quality. And beyond that, there is even a growing model in some newspaper titles where a league table exists for journalists based on who gets the most clicks and, by extension, they are deemed to be the most relevant and valuable to a company. But the idea of a sports journalist was never to be popular for the wrong reasons, but often to be unpopular for the right reasons. —Ewan McKenna