I'm doing a report for a journalism class and was wondering if anyone here who works as a journalist was up for a quick phone interview just on basic journalism skills. thanks
Here's a simple rule to follow. Just read every Chad Ford article at ESPN.com and do the exact opposite...
I meant, REAL journalists. other sports journalists are welcome because I know most of them work hard to get where they are and people like ford and stein really hurt their professon.
Bamaslammer is a sports journalist on the board. He covers the SEC and now is going to be a beat writer for the Atlanta Falcons. I am a senior in broadcast journalism at UT focused on sports journalism so I could help you as well. I also have contacts at KEYE in Austin, people from ESPN(Len Pasquarelli), cbssportsline.com, etc.) If you want any of the numbers or contacts I know, or would like to talk to me I'd be glad to help you out.
DVauthrin, appreciate it, but I just finished my interview with someone at the washington post. Thanks you for offering your help.
I can get you John Mc Clain and also the former sports Editor of the Chronicle. Let me know if you need help!
Sorry I was late! I would have done your interview in a snap. I cover the SEC, but starting after we hire our new sports guy, I'm going to be covering the Falcons almost exclusively. I've worked at three newspapers (four if you count my college fish wrap ) and this will be my last stop for a while, since I have so much freedom to cover whatever and whenever. My advice to college students interested in the field is: 1. Work at your student paper. You really learn how to do your job, writing under deadline pressure. Just simply going to J-school isn't enough. You need all the experience you can get and one of the few places you can always get that is at your student paper. 2. Work at your local paper as a stringer. I did it covering h/s sports and it is both rewarding and looks great on any resume. 3. Learn how to use Quark Xpress and Photoshop. You will use those two programs a ton, especially if you are an entry-level sports guy. Know them, use them, love them. 4.Send your resume to the known universe Send your resume all over the place, you never know who might call you or be interested. 5.Make friends with journalists I know this sounds basic, but people already in the biz can really help you, both with a recommendation and with getting your name in circulation. To survive in this business, you have to love it. Otherwise, I'd advise a young j-school grad to go teach english somewhere. Don't ever give up on yourself. Oh, and another thing, find a wife who makes really, really good money. Especially at first, you will be living on Ramen noodles and coasting down hills to conserve gas because this isn't a financially lucrative business.
I was a journalism major for two years at UT, but then switched over to PR because I thought it would give me more options (Graduated December 2002). As it turns out, I am now a writer/editor with the only daily paper in the Seychelles. Great advice from Bama -- I can't tell anybody enough how important it is to just KEEP WRITING...ANYWHERE. I regret not being as active as I should have in college. In the six months I have been working as a writer, I can't tell you how much my writing has improved on its own, simply from experience. The more you do it, the better you get, and it's as simple as that.
I guess you could say I'm an expat, especially since I've lived in the States my whole life, but I have dual citizenship.
Ah, I meant are you living in Seychelles now? re: expat. How do you do any reporting on what's going on in the Seychelles? How do you vet stories?
Oh...yeah I am living in Seychelles...I was just saying I am not a stereotypical expat...sorry for the confusion. I am actually in H-town now on a few weeks of vacation, but I leave to go back tomorrow morning I am gonna miss all the steak and chocolate. I've gained 20 pounds in under three weeks while I've been here.
That sounds like a great job. Congrats. Bet the weather is very nice. They are expecting snow here tomorrow. Uggh.
1. I am interning at KEYE-TV in Austin, so even though its TV, its still valuable journalism experience. 2. When I leave UT this spring, I'm going to volunteer to help the sports editor at the Katy Times(reporting work) and string for the Chronicle, to get published clips, experience, and more valuable contacts. This probably will happen in the fall because the nature of sports in the summer. I'm in a unique situation as I decided to pursue a career in print writing after I had finished the broadcast sequence at UT, so the Times will probably serve as my Daily Texan for me. 3. I absolutely love the business, and sports period. Sports is my passion, nothing else compares. And I love the feeling I get when I know I wrote a great piece and when someone reads it and lets me know they liked it. 4. Amen on not giving up on yourself. I have often joked with people that journalists have to be sort of cocky/confident, because if you aren't it's quite easy to get frustrated and dragged down by the business. I am confident in my abilities and that will never change. 5. I know all about the money, but to me a job is about happiness and not the amount of money it brings in. Writing about sports makes me happy, and when we were producing our news casts in the broadcast sequence at UT, I typically put everything aside those days to help with whatever I could to improve the show. Newscast day was one of the best feelings I ever had, and I loved the thrill of it all. The best advice I could say, is besides the basic never stop writing, or understand how hard the profession is, or the lack of money involved, is quite frankly, go intern/work at a professional news room. You'll realize it's not nearly as hard as it was during journalism school, because you have more experienced people around you among other things, like the fact you have the time to devote solely to the station or paper or magazine. In my few weeks at KEYE, I have realized that I could make it as a broadcast sports reporter because to be honest, once you get to work with qualified photographers/editors, and have all the team support that a news room provides, it's not that hard. They use the same type of editing equipment that we did at UT, and their digital equipment is similar to the program we used at UT. All I can say is writing about sports feels right to me, even if it is the not the most lucrative field out there, or one of the most demanding. I'm not going to fail at accomplishing my dream because I've been a fighter all my life. It would have been real easy to quit when I went to the journalism town hall meeting, and my future broadcast prof basically scared everyone to death. It would have been easy to quit when I started worrying about the fact my degree means very little last year, even though I will graduate with dean's list honors. But none of that compares to what I had to fight through as a kid. I grew up with epilepsy and cerebral palsy. The latter completely weakened the left side of my body, and the former caused me painful seizures until I was 13-14 years old. I'm 20 about to be 21 now. To this day I am entirely right hand dominant, and right now I'm typing at about a 40 wpm clip, and when I say I'm right handed dominant, I don't mean in the same sense right handed people are dominant, I mean my left side can't even do basic functions like finger touching properly. It sure as hell wasn't fun not having normal range of motion in my left hamstring as a kid, and having unbearable pain because the only way it would improve was by stretching it. I couldn't play football for the fear of tearing my left achilles tendon. However, I did play baseball/basketball, and typically won all the hardest working awards that could be handed out. In closing, I didn't have it as bad as a lot of kids I saw when I went to get CP checkups. They were confined to wheelchairs, had disfigured faces, etc. I can play sports, drive a car, do anything I want really, as my case was pretty mild, but even so it took years of therapy and hard work to get me to this point. So I guess, the way I feel is if I can overcome all that to graduate with honors at a school like UT in one of the universities most prestigious colleges, and accomplish things like being the homecoming king my senior year of high school, I can definitely make it as a sports reporter, and at the very least, it wouldn't be my nature to not go down without one hell of a fight.
I wrote for a number of websites, including the defunct OnHoops, NBAtalk, and Foxsports.com for about five years. Along the way I made a fair amount of industry friends, a little dough, and even won a PBWA award (Pro Basketball Writer's Assoc.) for some takeout piece on the Kobester. That said, as of last summer, I'm pretty much done with sportswriting. Deciding to give the dangerous stuff that everyone but me tried in high school (i.e., fronting a badass RnB band) a go ...
DVauthrin, ain't it gonna kill you to have to report another Katy High School state championship??? Just kidding man, good luck! Do you know the sports editor, by any chance. I have a friend who plays basketball overseas (in fact, they just had a big article about him in the Times) and IIRC, he doesn't really like the guy. I could be thinking about someone else, though.
