This past weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Chicago for the ACP/CMA Journalism Convention for college students. It would be my first conference ever and as cliche as it sounds, it was the best conference ever.
As I sat down to think about all of the things I learned while there, these are the main points I found.
Learn spanish. Too bad I took 4 years of French. More and more baseball players are coming from Latin America and are unable to speak English. It is important to be able to meet these players where they are at by saying a few words in Spanish to make them more comfortable. If I want to make myself a better professional and a better sports journalist, this is a skill that I am going to need to have, so Rosetta Stone, here I come.
Sacrifice everything. Food, sleep, etc. It will be worth it. It will pay off. I know this sounds like crazy advice, but sometimes we need crazy advice to make us better individuals. I realized as Steve Johnson said this that I was already well on my way to getting the results I wanted because there have been so many nights where I’ve sacrificed sleep or forgotten to eat because I’ve been working on making myself a better journalist. Besides, I like being told that what I want to do is worth it, that I will gain something from it.
Find a mentor. Who are you going to call and tell that you just had a gun pointed at you while taking photographs. Not your mom, your mentor. They’ll probably say, “Did you get the shot?” And then ask you about the experience. Your mom will just freak out and make you stop your job. “No one is going to understand what you do beside other journalists.”
There’s no offseason if you want to get into this sport.
Consistency and accuracy are more important than being the first and the fastest.
Every single story matters all the time. Every day matters; every story matters. The former Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the Penn State newspaper said this multiple times throughout their session on how they handled the Penn State scandal last year. Other news didn’t stop while they spent time focusing on Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno and their administration. They have a large enough staff to have people step away from their jobs and focus on the scandal while others focus on doing the daily things. But, this is a reminder that no matter what story you’re writing, whether it be a piece on something controversial or something that happens everyday, it matters and somebody is going to care about it. You should be writing it in that manner.
The more you cover sports the more you understand them.
If you’re going to fail, fail big because if you succeed, you’re going to SUCCEED.
Journalism isn’t going away; sports journalism really isn’t going away.
Observe. Journalists are observers. They watch the people and things going on around them. Then they either write about or take pictures of it. Make sure that your eyes are always open and that you’re looking for new ways to tell old stories and that no thing, no matter how small, is insignificant and can be a story.
Have a tape recorder. “I feel like ten years old and want my mom [when I don’t have my tape recorder].” The man giving this lecture is 100% correct. Having a tape recorder allows you to not miss a thing that anyone said in an interview.
Be curious. Curiosity fuels questions.
You’re asking questions because you seriously want to know.
Create your own shorthand. You are never going to be able to write every single word down in the exact order that they were stated in. It’s not going to happen. People speak a lot faster than you can write. Have a shorthand, that you understand. Symbols that represent certain words, etc. so that when the time comes to look at your notes, you’re going to understand what the person said and what your notes say.