Is it too late to do this as a career???...

...that's the ? that has been plaguing me for the past six months. I am 23 and in the process of making the decision on whether or not to pursue sports writing as a career again, this time for good. When I graduated HS in 02 i accepted a position as a part-time sports reporter for a daily newspaper in the immediate NYC area. After two years and 100+ clips, i left the paper to pursue something totally different. Now, a couple of years later and a lot of personal anaylsis, this is really where my heart is. I now live in the southern part of the country and I am looking for different schools to finish my degree. I have about a yr and a half left on a journalism degree.

I am sure you guys get a lot of these threads, but after asking many people and getting mixed reviews, i just wanted to get a whole other batch of thoughts. Any advice on where to start again, college choices here in the south, and anything else is much appreciated. Thanks in advance and PM's are strongly welcomed.

 

For you, or for the industry?

 

phenomenal response...ha....
i guess that's a great point...

 

Dude, you're 23.

Too late? To be a child actor, maybe.

 

Wait, you took a part-time job and did that for two years instead of college? Just trying to understand your situation a bit better.

 

In the past month about a thousand people around the country, including some good friends of mine, have been laid off from newspapers. In the next month, hundreds more, possibly including me, will be laid off. I would urge you to reconsider your career choice. There is no future in working for newspapers. If you are younger than 40, your choices are pretty much to be stuck in a low-paying job at a small paper or move up to a bigger paper under constant threat of being sacked.

Go back to school. Get a business degree, or a teaching credential, or anything but a journalism degree. A journalism degree's not necessary to be a sports writer and you'll be glad of the options that another degree gives you if you decide to go into newspapers.

Forgive me if I sound negative, but that's what I and most of the rest of us on this board have been living with for the past several years.

 

100+ Clips? How many of them are good? How many of them are great? How many of them would get you hired tomorrow?
How many of them would get you hired tomorrow and are worth making $350 a week?

 

Yes, too late. The cutoff point was Nov. 15, 2005.

Sorry.

 

If you love this profession, willing to do whatever it takes to hang around, stick with us. If not, there are many other things to do.

 

Ouch. :-\

You have no idea how close that is to being literally true for me (my layoff/buyout was dropped on me within a week of that date and I haven't walked into a newspaper's offices since then by personal choice).

 

NY, I can't in good conscience advise anyone your age to go into newspapers in general, let alone sportswriting for a newspaper. The layoff numbers over the past month have been staggering, and know this, there will be more. McClatchy for example hasn't solved its debt service problem yet; it's just bought a little more time. And as the recession deepens, there is no economic upturn on the horizon.

If you truly love journalism, look at an online outlet, unless you're content to make peanuts because some chain has eliminated the longtime staffers making livable wages. If this sounds like doom and gloom, I'm playing devil's advocate here. At least cast a wider net than newspapers in your job search.

 

Sad to see my old friend OTD in such a state of mind, but certainly understandable as well.

I obviously can't tell you, "Sure, newspapers are a life blood of our society, and they'll be around forever. It's a calling: Have at it."

One thought against the justifiable gloom and doom, though: Information will continue to be a crucial part of every thinking person's life, and somebody's going to be providing it. And that includes sports news; it's not like people are turning away from sports. They're turning away from sports "pages" (meaning print).

But information written and delivered in different ways will still be coveted, so if you want to keep an open mind and enter content delivery (sorry, I couldn't think of a less odious term that didn't mean print) and write and edit sports, and understand mobile and blogs (or their next incarnation) and whatever else comes down the pike, there's still going to be work out there. You'll have to be flexible and nimble. But with all the bad things going on, this time is also going to have the potential to be a lot of fun for those who embrace the change.