Sports Journalism Talk

Any advice on giving a 20 minute general talk on Sports Journalism other than telling people not to go into the business?

 

Who's your audience?

 

I did it a couple of years ago to a group of high school kids. It was damned tough, because what else can you say but that the business is tough right now? I mean, you talk about the plusses and minusses of the job and the satisfaction of doing the job. You talk about how great it once was. You talk about your experiences. Then you tell them they're probably going to be disappointed.

 

Yeah. Depends on the class. You may be able to tell them what a reporter does and how it has changed in the past 5-10 years and take up 15 minutes.

 

Tell them not to be print journalists.

 

Upper division college class (journalism majors).

The idea is to discuss sports journalism.

So far, I'm planning on showing some examples of great work, showing how the industry is changing etc.

 

Sounds like a good start.

It's strange to think that 10 years ago a days work for a sports writer was to go to a game, write a story and maybe a sidebar or notebook and that was plenty.

Now they have to do that, plus live blog, tweet, maybe do a webcast and video, etc., etc.

 

And the pay's pretty much the same.

 

I know when I was a college kid studying journalism, I was obsessed with all the little anecdotal stuff about the job. I loved to hear stories about interactions with coaches that illustrated some kind of ethical or practical dilemma for a sportswriter. Basically, I was interested in the culture of it.

We all have great stories about the process of doing the job -- the time a guy wouldn't answer your calls and you ran into him at the gas station, or when you spent all day trying to turn something from off-record to on-record, or whatever -- and I think students would eat it up.

 

I'd agree. Mix in some funny stories ... (I have one that dates back to the mid-1990s about the laptop from hell), and try to be positive about the future of the business.

I like the idea of talking about the changes in the business ... especially technological. I started back in the days of film and paste-up ... oh, and the AP Laserphoto printer ... ... so it's sometimes cool to talk about that stuff.

I remember putting in a CE request as an ME in Oklahoma in the mid-1990s for the hottest new must-have item ... wait for it ... a negative scanner.

 

Tell them about some of your job-getting experiences. Interviews, contacts, anything that gets an edge.

It may be mostly hopeless, but that's what they really want to hear.

 

I agree with RS that students want to know how to try to land a job. I talked to a class last week _ high school seniors in a multi-platform journalism class. They wanted to know how to "find" original stories and tell them in the most apt way, which I found heartening. I expected mostly questions about the bad deadlines (got a few of those) and the pay (got one of those). Overall, the students seemed to like hearing about tough assignment logistics; filing from strange places in the pre-wireless days; how to deal with sources when they are unreasonable, lying or mad, and so on.