When news of the NCAA’s sanctions against Syracuse University broke, the news editor of The Daily Orange was in the sky.

He was headed home to Chicago, traveling like most of the staff. It was the first day of spring break.

An assistant sports editor was traveling to Connecticut in a car full of people. A men’s basketball beat writer was on his way to Raleigh, North Carolina, for Syracuse’s game against North Carolina State. A second assistant sports editor was already in North Carolina, covering the ACC women’s basketball tournament in Greensboro.

Back on campus, a lone assistant news editor holed himself up in an editing suite ― a so-called “war room” ― in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The timing could have been calamitous. But The D.O. staff did what it could to prepare for the announcement, brainstorming story ideas, organizing a list of important contacts, and keeping file photos of men’s basketball head coach Jim Boeheim and chancellor Kent Syverud at the ready.

On March 6, the day the NCAA released its 94-page report detailing SU’s violations, The Daily Orange published 22 articles about the sanctions on its website. The staff would post 23 additional stories before the end of spring break, and publish a special print edition.

“Once you actually see the news and you understand the breadth of it and start to dissect it, you’re like, ‘OK, we can plan for this a little bit, but it really has to be our instinct now,’” said Jesse Dougherty, a men’s basketball beat writer last season and the current web editor.

The first article The D.O. published about the sanctions was based on a page of the report that gave an overview of SU’s violations and punishments, said then-news editor Brett Samuels, who is now the paper’s managing editor. As staff members analyzed the report, they pitched more ideas and looked for other angles.

Assistant sports editor Matt Schneidman landed one of The D.O.’s most engaging stories by Facebook messaging former SU athletes who were paid for some jobs at the Oneida YMCA.

“I’ll admit I didn’t run that past anyone,” Schneidman said. “I was just bored one night so I started messaging these guys on Facebook and it turned out to be the most-viewed story.”

Another important aspect of The D.O.’s NCAA coverage was the collaboration between news and sports writers. Sam Blum, then an assistant sports editor and currently the sports editor, said Samuels and then-assistant news editor Justin Mattingly knew the NCAA coverage was something they should be a part of, so they jumped at the chance to work on it.

“It’s hard to think of this in the moment, but this is something that will be remembered by generations of Daily Orange writers and staff members,” Blum said. “People are going to talk about this.”

For Mattingly, who is now news editor, effective communication and trust among staff members helped The D.O. produce high-quality content.

“As a team, it’s like, wow, this is awesome, because people wanted to be a part of it,” Mattingly said. “People wanted to put stories out there.”

Samuels agreed.

“When everybody’s engaged and knows it’s a big deal and everybody wants to be a part of something, it doesn’t take a whole lot of managing to get them to do really good work.”

Published on September 10, 2015 at 2:07 pm

Contact Alexa: atorrens@syr.edu