Breaking Down Auburn's Quarterback Battle
04/07/2009
I'm Ryan Williams.
My favorite teams are the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Auburn Tigers.
I watch almost every NFL or NCAA football game I can.
I noticed that this morning... good work on it man, that's the way to get readers, be the first one to break the news and bring different articles to the table... Keep it up!
333 days ago
The classes in college were really time consuming outside of the actual class time. Depending on where you go to school, some allow you to focus on TV and/or Sports Broadcasting, while others -- like the program I did at Radford -- cover TV, print journalism, internet and radio. It's probably better because it gets you used to all platforms when you graduate and most every newspaper uses the internet and sometimes even podcasts and video anymore.
The hardest part I had in college was coming up with story ideas and learning AP style. There are so many silly rules to writing for newspapers and it takes some time to learn it. Also, as a student it was hard to get people to talk to me and/or to get into events.
Once you become a professional and have a press pass, you can get into everywhere and more people are likely to be willing to sit down and talk with you.
Overall I wouldn't say the classes were hard, at Radford we put together a couple live-taped newscast where each reporter had to do a 2-3 minutes news package. It was fun to go out and interview people and put it all together and then I was actually the sports anchor for one of the newscasts, so it was fun. I'm not sure if that answered your question or not, it may have just been a bunch of ramblings!
The Chargers game was exciting, I was happy to see Indy go down, Pittsburgh always seems to struggle against them, especially in the play-offs so I definitely think it gives the Steelers the edge. I could see the Chargers taking down the Titans. In my opinion, the Titans are overrated and it could show up next week. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I'd like nothing else but to see the Steelers take home a 6th Superbowl, they have the talent and staff to do it... Will Roethlisberger be OK for the game next week?
334 days ago
Writing is an interesting career, I studied Journalism at Radford University and loved it. The key to getting into writing is doing exactly what you are doing now, getting work published. While I was in college I wrote for our school's online magazine about NASCAR and College Football. I never thought it would get me anywhere, but it landed me the job at The Gazette.
Not sure if you are interested in sports or general reporting, but both have advantages and disadvantages.
With general reporting you get stuck covering a lot of things like accidents, murders and meetings, but you are home most evenings and weekend. The other bad part is that you are on call 24/7 if an event happens in your area, so that can be annoying. For the most part though the hours are decent and pay isn't horrible for a starting job.
With sports, it can be harder to break into, especially at a small newspaper that has had the same editor for years. One thing about sports is that you are guaranteed to work 3-4 evenings a week. Obviously all sporting events [high school I mean] happen in the evenings and you usually spend a few hours after the game writing it up and then layout out a page if you are an editor.
I know during football season, it's nothing for me to work until 2 or 3 a.m. finishing up a football story and submitting it to my editor...
If there's anything I can do to help you, feel free to ask, I've been through it all!
335 days ago
No problem Ryan—glad it all works for you!
336 days ago
Welcome to B/R
336 days ago
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