Experience going into your first gig?

Half semester at college newspaper on basketball beat. Had a radio show for a year-and-half..
Major in communication, not journalism, in 2006
Nine-month internship at 45,000 in sports department
Freelancer for Rivals
Next? I'll apply to local weeklies but hopefully a daily or just continue adding clips at Rivals.

 

One year in high school.
Sports editor of my junior college paper for the year I was there. Also was a high school football/basketball stringer for a 70,000-circ close by.
Covered football and men's basketball and also served as sports editor twice in the two years at major four-year I graduated from.
Three days after I graduated, got a full-time at a 32,000-circ. Preps galore!

 

HS paper editor.

College paper for four years, reporter, SE,ME.

Three interships, two at major metros and one at a mid-sized daily.

Grad school.

Podunk Press as a one-man gang.

PR for about six months.

Desk at a mid-sized daily.

Damn, looking at it all makes me feel old.

Road less traveled and all...

 

Weird story...when I was in college, I wanted to be a sportswriter. Got a gig working for a 35K daily part-time during the summers and doing some correspondence work for them while in school. After college, I got a news copy editing gig (Dow Jones didn't offer sports gigs at that point) and parlayed that into a news reporting gig. After five years as a reporter, got moved into a sports copy editing position. Spent a little more than a year there before landing in a sports editing position at a smaller paper.

 

Four years at my college paper and worked part-time for three years at a 40K daily near school. After graduating, spent a year as a part-timer at my hometown paper -- a 150K shop in a major market.

 

Never worked newspapers in high school.

Was told by a good friend in college that I should write for the student paper, but couldn't walk into games with a music instrument in one hand and pen and paper in the other. Stand by that decision to this day ... had waaaaay too much fun.

Worked the wrong crap jobs to stay employed for two years out of school.

Finally got chance to string for hometown paper, dealership got rid of me because they didn't like it, ate stringer money for six months. Went into newsroom on Saturdays to learn Quark, and take the odd call.

Went to a nearby paper for my first full-time gig. Went back home six months later when they offered me a chance to go home.

Hope to write a better ending to this story ...

 

Strung high school football and soccer ( as well as a couple of Pop Warner games . . .shudder) for a local weekly while in junior college.
Two years on well-regarded student paper at four-year college.
Interned at fanboy magazine for my college
My dumbass should have tried for more internships, but I was too busy trying to graduate ASAFP.
Got lucky in first gig out of college, as an agate boy for hometown paper. Legends say the original hire failed the drug test. Lucky that homtown paper was a 75,000 circulation.

Got further lucky when an old friend from junior college turned up as sports editor of another local daily, where I managed to accomplish some things.

Can honestly say I would have given up a long time ago if I wasn't fortunate enough to have friends with a knack for pointing me in the right direction and helping open the best doors I could realistically hope for.

 

Wrote features, covered intramurals and some minor sports game coverage for my once-a-week college newspaper. Never covered a football or basketball game in college.

Never had an internship, never worked part-time during the school year at a paper, or for my hometown weekly in the summer.

Sent out resumes all over my school state, my home state and several remote regions. Got one positive response from the remote region, got hired over the phone, loaded up my car a month after graduation and never looked back. Someplace I still have the rejection letters, and the one positive one that helped determine the next 30 years of my life.

I now realize how ill-prepared I was, and how lucky I was to be hired. But it was a different world back then.

 

Worked part-time at two daily newspapers while in college as an assistant online webmaster/producer/editor and would write a little here and there. I was mostly a news reporter for the college paper.

I'm still at the same paper I started full-time with (after college) because it's a decent-sized daily. I've held three different positions here, but this is only my second year in sports. Other than learning some of the finer details of sports I didn't really follow (basketball), I had a very small learning curve to do this job.

 

Right out of college; no real-life experience.

You're there to learn and improve.

 

My first job out of school: I just had a few games under my belt working at a weekly when I went to a daily full-time for sports. Covered the for SE when he was on vacation. Looking back the writing was terrible. Yikes.

I was a GA reporter and that made me want to do sports. I'd rather be stuck at a boring soccer match than a boring city council meeting, or watchng the cops scrape somebody off the road after a terrible accident.

 

* Four years at college paper daily (reporter, SE twice, ME, delivery driver) and a year on college radio
* Six months on sports desk at 40K
* A year at 150K as a bureau correspondent (school allowed me to use this for my internship)
* Graduated and moved to first full-time job at a 30K.