What Does a Sports Desk Do When Sports Are on Hold?

“You don’t want to be flip in any way,” he said, “but you also do want to acknowledge that readers, to some degree, want other things to read.”

Sports reporters and editors have also helped with coronavirus coverage on the National, Metro and International desks. They’ve written about coronavirus disbelievers, edited articles about overloaded hospitals in Italy and contributed to The Times’s 24/7 live updates on the pandemic.

Benjamin Hoffman, a senior Sports editor, said that covering the coronavirus hadn’t been as difficult as one might expect because sports coverage prepares reporters and editors to respond immediately to drastic change.

“If you’ve written up an N.B.A. finals game, with new posts every 15 minutes for the entirety of the game, it’s not too big of a stretch to then move on to other live coverage,” he said.

In fact, Mr. Hoffman helped manage a live blog that for weeks recorded how the coronavirus was affecting day-to-day life in the United States well beyond the sports world.

For reporters who cover sports that have been postponed or canceled, like Sopan Deb, a basketball reporter, the altered landscape requires finding different ways to write about their beats.

“We’re no longer talking about what’s going on on the floor, we’re talking about what’s going on off the floor,” Mr. Deb said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/reader-center/coronavirus-sports-reporting.html