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| Journalism Seminars and Sports Writers |
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Last weekend the staff of the Central Oregonian went to Eugene for a Society of Professional Journalists seminar.
This was the first actual journalism training that I have ever had.
The seminar was well attended, and over the course of the weekend there was a great deal of interaction between those presenting sessions and those of us that were in attendance. That is until Saturday afternoon when I went to the lone sports session on the agenda.
When I entered the room there were probably 20 people there, all very young, and all engaged in what appeared to be intense conversation. I incorrectly assumed that they were there for the sports session and attempted to include myself in one of the conversations.
It was at this point in time that I discovered how popular sports journalism is in Oregon. It turns out that all of the individuals in the room were journalism students from the University of Oregon who had been attending a session on how to get a job in journalism following graduation. They were talking so intently because they had apparently just learned that most of the large newspapers in the country have scaled back their staffs, and print journalism is currently a tough market to get into.
As the time for the sports session to begin came and went, journalism students slowly left the room until I found myself alone in the room with the two gentlemen who were there to present the sports session and one of the event organizers who was there to introduce them to their audience.
There they were, all ready to present their words of wisdom about sports journalism to all of the sports writers at the conference, and no one was there.
It turned out that one of the presenters is a well- known business writer and his only expertise in sports journalism is writing about sports business, which he apparently first started doing when he discovered that he could get into Trailblazer games for free with a press pass. The other presenter was a long-time sports writer turned editor who spent the first part of the session talking about the good old days while they were waiting for someone else to show up.
After about 20 minutes of this, a journalism student with a camera showed up to photograph the session and they decided that they might as well begin the presentation that they had prepared.
The first words of advice they gave were do not go into sports journalism until you have already established ,yourself as a writer and have a good working knowledge of the journalism profession. There second piece of advice was that if you have the opportunity to do so the best journalism job you can get is writing a sports column.
My obvious question as someone who writes a sports column is if it's such a great job why the tremendous attendance at their seminar? They actually had two serious answers to my question.
First, many journalists are somewhat idealistic and have a desire to make a difference in the world and don't find reporting sports scores to be particularly relevant to society or their dreams of winning a Pulitzer prize.
Second, the real beauty of the job is the rest of the sports journalists were at the Oregon State football game instead of the seminar.
Now if I can just figure out how to go to the Duck game this weekend instead of working, I guess I am ready to be a real sports journalist. |
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