All writers and broadcasters are more than just writers or broadcasters. They are observers, communicators, questioners, researchers and historians all at once. Usually they are doing all of that on a deadline.

At their finest hours, writers and broadcasters are artists. It’s a finely honed craft. Many try, and lots are good. The greats, however, tend to be an elite group – a group that turns their profession into a career of artistry.

Jim McKay is being remembered this week after his passing over the weekend. The tributes have been constant over the past few days throughout the entire industry.

Richard Sandomir pays tribute to McKay in The New York Times, calling him a great “storyteller.”

That is one of the finest compliments any broadcaster or journalist can ever be paid.

McKay is from a different generation of sports journalists. Call it old school. Call it whatever you want.

The way the media works has changed so much in the past 40 years. Jim McKay was the only voice broadcasting back to America from Munich during the 1972 Olympics. He alone was serving up the information on the hostage crisis, and with grace and class provided one of the first pieces of live news coverage we’ve ever seen.

Today there are hundreds of satellite dishes beaming the signal live within minutes of any breaking news event.

About a week ago in Paris Bud Collins was recalling his first trip to the City of Lights to cover the French Tennis Championships. It was 1973, and Bud was the first and only American to make the trip to record the tennis tournament for the readers back home.

The French, he recalled, were almost amused at the sight of an American in Paris writing about the tennis. We wanted to know how Bud would file his copy (that’s old school for “post”) for the paper back home.

“Well, we used teletype back then, but the operators would all go home by 8 in the evening. So I would call and dictate my stories over the phone.”

There was no wifi in the lobby back then. Heck, this was six years before ESPN. At the risk exposing my youth, that just seems impossible to me.

But it wasn’t. And despite of the challenges, some of the finest artists excelled.

One of the artists I have to admit to idolizing is Dick Schaap. Some of my under-35 age group know him for his hosting of the Sports Reporters on Sunday mornings, but he was so much more to the over-35 crowd.

In his autobiography, Schaap wrote, “Often I am asked what my favorite sport is, and always I say, ‘People.’ I collect people.”

Beautiful. Artistic. Refreshing.

The game has changed drastically. There is so much competition. Deadlines don’t exist anymore because someone else is always posting somewhere else at this very minute.

But that doesn’t mean that the motives need to change. In today’s age of speed and bombast, I wonder how many in the business aspire for artistry. How many writers, broadcasters, talk show hosts and bloggers are setting out to collect people or tell stories? Or would take the time and effort to dictate a story over the phone?

From what I’m reading and hearing, not nearly enough, which is a disappointing way for us to carry on what McKay, Collins and Schaap have started for us.