Hello all!
My name is Scott and I’ve been working as a journalist since the age of about 22.
My first job (a position I took before I finished my college degree) in journalism came as the sports editor of two small newspapers. I then moved on to a sports editor job for about 11 years and really wanted to make the next move to a bigger paper, but it never happened. I was offered several gigs at slightly larger papers, but they never would pay me anything significant. I ended up freelancing a lot of stories for big daily papers like The Oregonian and a bunch of other papers to not only make ends meet, but to try to get noticed.
I later landed a job at KATU News as a web producer/online journalist. I learned a lot of interesting stuff there, but I knew I had to return to school to make the transition to a communications position. I ended up finishing at Portland State this past summer and knew I wanted to further my academic career.
Now that I’m in grad school, I’m looking to take all of my journalism skills and add these strategic communication skills in order to come up with some really innovative techniques to engage the public. I like the process of how all of these things come together and the effect it has on people. I’m also interested in how social media affects people, organizations and athletes.
Scott,
I admire your willingness to jump from one career choice to another. That can be really difficult for someone! During this time in our lives as journalists, it will be interesting to see how we will have to adapt and grow to fit emerging technologies and media platforms.
–Katelyn
Scott,
One of the things that interests me about modern sports journalism is how under the microscope athletes are these days with web sites like Deadspin criticizing their every move, on and off the field. I think Deadspin and, to a lesser degree, Bleacher Report, are pretty entertaining for the most part, but some of their stories seem to straddle the line between news and TMZ-esque celebrity gossip. Sports journalism didn’t used to be like that. What are your thoughts? Do you think these sites are good or bad for sports?
Kevin,
I agree with you on the sports journalism comment. It does really seem like sports coverage tries harder nowadays to find “drama” for listeners and readers to be entertained with. I prefer just to watch games on mute sometimes, sport carries enough drama without commentary.
Scott-I am also interested in your thoughts about Deadspin and Bleacher Report.
I really haven’t investigated Deadspin a whole lot when it comes to sports, but I promise I will! Bleacher Report is kind of different, though. I used to think Bleacher Report was just a bunch of Top-10 lists of whatever the sports topic was and that there wasn’t a whole lot of thought thrown into it (which I really didn’t like because sports departments are always thought of us the equivalent of a toy department in a store and they’re not really taken seriously). But then one of my sports reporter colleagues moved down to San Francisco with his girlfriend and he ended up landing a job at Bleacher Report. He said it was really interesting because most of the people he works with had no boots-on-the-ground sports journalism experience. What I mean by this is that they would be all excited that they just broke some big story, but in actuality, they had just taken tweets from an actual newspaper reporter and kind of re-purposed it for Bleacher Report and then it would start to make national news. My friend kept telling his colleagues that they weren’t breaking the story — the newspaper guy was. Anyway, I know Bleacher Report just hired Howard Beck from The New York Times (along with a few other big names) for NBA coverage, so it seems like Bleacher Report is now moving into more of a traditional media role where they’ll be coming up with actual thoughtful, researched content rather than just writing short little stories with no quotes and a bunch of pictures.
Scott: I appreciate your interested in “adding these strategic communication skills in order to come up with some really innovative techniques to engage the public.” One things I’ve always wondered about strategic communication is whether or not the content matters as much as the “techniques.” Do you have any insight onto whether or not “likes” and “shares” etc are influenced by the quality of the content, or the mastery of the wizard communication strategist?
* interest *into (I apologize for the typos in that :/)