Sports Journalism Talk

If you can land your hands on one, bring in a trash-80.

That should take up an entire hour right there.

 

Are we referring to the six-line display flat laptop?

 

Don't shortchange yourself. The pay is less.

 

Tell them to sprint to the registrar and beg them to let them change their majors.

You want sportswriting anecdotes, tell them to come on this site or read "Pond Scum and Vultures"

You want to help them out, tell them to change their majors now. This isn't a question of being overly dramatic, it's a question of helping people out who are too young, eager and optimistic to know any better.

 

Since it's a journalism class, my first thought was-- in addition to great examples of writing-- to bring in the AV equipment and show them someone like Ed Werder.

I would emphasize that they'll never make it as a pontificator or opinion-spewer.

And unfortunately, they probably won't make it as a topnotch feature-ist, either. Lots of incredibly talented folks can spin the fuck out of a yarn, and it's just not enough now.

If somebody really wants to get into sports journalism and won't take no for an answer, they need to learn that information will always propel them to the top of the field.

If you've got access to information that nobody else has, people will pay you lots of money, let you write, click on your story, and let you be on TV no matter what the hell you look like.

If you can report hardcore information cleanly--

i.e.
1) accurately -- no throwing shit to the wall to see what sticks.
2) without pissing so many people off that the flow stops
3) without ethical breaches

there will always be a hunger for information.

 

I was at a seminar where a Texas journalism prof was a little while back. He talked about how the students in his classroom were so defiant about never reading newspapers.
So they want to get jobs in journalism, but they want journalism to basically go away.

 

Newspaper jobs are going away, but journalism isn't. It's just taking a different form. The kids ought to know that. Then again, they probably get that better than most of us.

 

This youthful enthusiasm is what gives me hope for future generations of journalists. It eventually will diminish or die in many of them once they get into the system and find out it isn't all they think it will be but it's good to have at the beginning of a career.


I would emphasize to any high school or college audience to read, and read voraciously a variety of subjects in print including magazines, newspapers and books. Read online, too, but don't ignore print. Learn to shoot photos and video. Cultivate sources. Keep all contact information, starting in college with friends, teachers, advisors. Be prepared for anything and be prepared to go anywhere.

 

Best piece of advice on that I ever heard was from the great Bob Ryan at a journalism seminar:
He said, If you don't go to bed at night wishing there was something you'd had more time to read -- be it a book, a newspaper, a magazine, whatever -- then you aren't trying hard enough.
I thought that was a perfect way to put it.