What exactly are sports journalists qualified to do?!

Favourite NewsRadio scene when Matthew cuts his arm playing the "catch the cup on top of the light standard" game. There was some conversation between Jimmy and the staff about how to cover up the behaviour and the idea was he was assisting Joe with his duties.

Punchline: "Dave, Matthew is a reporter. He isn't qualified to change a light bulb."

 

The world needs ditch-diggers, too.

 

For some reason it seems difficult to get those points across on a resume. People don't really seem to get that I'd be used to working tough hours, meeting deadlines quickly and being as accurate as possible the first time through.

 

I type really fast...

 

Title of this thread is a Top 10 list waiting to happen...

 

They don't get it because the image of a sports writer is some lazy asshole who watches sports for a living instead of working a "real" job.

For the record, groceries are my trade. I am a grocer. My name is Roger the Grocer. I arrange, design, and sell groceries.

 

There is definitely a stigma attached to this. There was a similar thread a while back where someone talked about interviewing for a hospital PR job and being hammered on whether he would be able to handle "the pressure" of the job, the implication very much being that he had spent his life on easy street covering games people play.

 

I'm going back to school. Finishing my communications degree, finally. I'm going to start volunteering with either a) a political party/candidate of some type or b) a charity.

The school, plus the newspaper experience, plus the volunteer stuff should equal a decent resume I can spin into something.

 

I think next time this comes up I'm going to play up my desk and page-building duty and making deadlines, and that I at least dabbled in multiple capacities within the workplace - I shot photos, even did the odd general news piece here and there - If I eventually get asked if I got to write or cover games then I can just strike a smile and say "Yeah, well, sometimes." I've never been strictly a "sports reporter" or "sports writer" though that's what the official title is. Nobody has anything so specialized anymore, at least as far as small papers go. In any case, the hiring manager is not going to give a rat's ass that you can cast a catchy lede and score a baseball game, so no need to bring that up. Leave out the easy/fun/glamorous parts of the job, such as they are, and focus on your willingness and ability to trudge through shit.

Myself, I'm at a crossroads professionally right now, and most signs point to distancing myself from journalism as a line of work, at least for now. The mass media establishment, as it were - newspapers, the Big Three TV networks, major radio broadcasters now on the brink of consolidation of a single entity - it's dead. And eventually something solvent will emerge, probably on the Internet, and likely not on newsprint. I'm getting the feeling the clueless publishers and corporate drones have missed the boat. Right now writing for websites is spotty stuff, since it is heavily freelanced out and there's another topic here on that...

Thing is, before taking a part-time retail job a year or so ago, I had never done anything as a regular job other than working in sports at small daily newspapers and doing freelance sports writing, as something that sprung directly out of a high school internship and nine years later I still haven't been as much as enrolled in a for-credit college course. The plan was to work and go to school at the same time, but it just didn't work out like that. I decided to stick with what I had rather than risking half-assing school and work and end up losing out with both. Slowly the grim reality of the whole business was sinking in and my idealistic view of the way I expected things to be gave way to the jaded pessimism of reality that permeates most newsrooms today. It can be a toxic environment, or at least one that I tired of being around for 40+ hours a week. Now I'm on the ground level figuring out what to do. As far as education is concerned I'm basically an autodidact with on-site journalism training. I have no tangible education credentials for many jobs - hell, the positions I filled asked for degrees when they were open, but being that the logistics of getting college graduates to work for ~$8/hour while getting compensated at less than half of IRS rate for a fair amount of road miles for a four-digit-circulation daily were a bit difficult. So that's where I came into the picture. The paper got folded in with a larger sister paper, and did a year there before stepping away. I haven't had a full-time newspaper gig since (and haven't been in active pursuit of one for the most part).

Whatever I do, I need to do something before I get as old as I feel after nearly seven years of milking every ounce of energy my wide-eyed kid energy could muster for the sake of trying to be something interesting to read in the morning for a few thousand people. Candles get short pretty fast when you burn them at both ends. The idea of starting from square one going to college - nearly a decade removed from being in any sort of regular "class" setting - is a little intimidating for me. I know this sounds lame, but it feels like walking through miles of flat land to come up to the base of Everest, looking upward. I'll find a way to get over it, just like anything else. The other question is what exactly I want to do, and that's the most uncommitted part at this point. I'm at peace with the fact that I'm not going to have a 10,000-square-foot mansion with two Porsches in the garage, and I don't want the headache. I just want to make ends meet and perhaps even provide for a small family. That's something I've taken a few essential steps for since stepping out of the daily newspaper grind, such as re-establishing a love life. Before that my love for what I was doing (well, most of it) was my love life. Now I have a wonderful lady who wants to have a future with me, whatever that is going to turn out to be.

It's a problem and it's obviously not one I'm alone with, but all in all I have to say I'm blessed. Good luck to those of us trying to find our way.

 

to be fair, moddy, most sports journalists think the only thing lawyers do all day is sit around court rooms and yell "no, you're out of order."