Advice For Students
Thank you for coming to my website. I’m often asked for advice from college and graduate students studying journalism and other media-related fields. There are many words of wisdom I could give you, but I’ll start with just one: internships.
Internships are everything.
You definitely need an internship or two or three to gain the experience that will get you a full-time job after you graduate from college. You need to get your foot in the door at a news organization as quickly as possible. Most journalism schools list internships on their websites. Talk to a professor or adviser. Search the internet. Talk to recent graduates from your university. Apply for anything and everything.
For those of you who love news, sports and writing and are not yet in college, I strongly suggest that you look into universities that have journalism schools. Then, when you get to college, go into the offices of the campus newspaper, TV station or radio station as soon as possible. Classes are great, and important, but becoming a journalist is all about gaining practical experience. The more experience you get while in college, the better the odds that you will get a job right out of college.
Sports journalism is the greatest adventure of a lifetime. I’ve been writing and talking about the issues in sports, nationally and internationally, for more than 30 years, and I love it more today than the day I started. My hope is that someday you will feel the same way.
If you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Trust me on that one.
Due to the volume of e-mail I receive, I sometimes cannot get back to every student who reaches out to me. I will do my best. In the meantime, you can find answers to some of your questions, as well as quotes and comments, in videos of two panels I moderated: Women In Sports Media (hosted by The Newseum on Dec 6, 2014) and Beyond The Box Score (a lecture series hosted by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism on Feb 17, 2015).