Things have come a long way since I covered my first Frozen Four in 1996. Heck, it wasn’t even called the Frozen Four back then.
In the “olden” days many reporters didn’t have laptops. Most relied on notepads and tape recorders. But things have gone high tech lately with solid state recorders and the newest feature – transcribed press conferences.
Starting a few years back, reporters didn’t have to take their own notes or record press conferences anymore – the NCAA transcribed the comments, printed them out and gave them to reporters. A nice feature, but most of us are on deadline and can’t wait to get them. They’re useful to compare against our notes to make sure we got things right.
But for the past two seasons, things have gotten even easier. Now not only are the quotes transcribed, they’re emailed to us within minutes of the end of the press conference. It’s still a little too long to wait if you’re on deadline, but the time saved by cutting and pasting makes up for that.
For now, I’ll stick to my own notes and recordings for things that need to be filed immediately after the game, but I do find the emails very convenient for everything else.
