Is there any way to avoid a preps gig as your first job?

I understand your point, but I think this is analogous to asking: is there any way to become heavyweight champion without learning to jump rope? I don't have anything against boxers who, from John L. Sullivan to Floyd Mayweather, have relied on jumping rope, per se, it's just that jumping rope is, like, my least favorite thing. I've tried it, I hate it.

The answer(s) is (are) obvious, I think. You can: a) learn to love jumping rope because no singular exercise is so critical to improving fundamentals as jumping rope b) find or invent another exercise which simultaneously improves your footwork/timing/wrist turning, or c) throw the most devastating right hand since the Mike Tyson-Little Mac World Major Minor Heavyweight Title Bout in 1985.

As a recent college grad, you don't know the things you don't know yet. I graduated from college ten years ago and I'm still learning things I didn't know I didn't know. Don't be in a huge rush. Looking for a shortcut almost always results in a longer, more circuitous route. Despite your experience in college, writing--even sportswriting, believe it or not--is a craft that requires a lot of refinement. Focus on that and the rest will fall into place. Best of luck!

 

I actually prefer preps and small colleges, but that's just me. The great Bill Buchalter of the Orlando Sentinel showed me just how rewarding it can be and I've never let that get away from me.

And if you insist on not having to do preps, I have one thing to say that you might have to get used to hearing: I'd like a seafood pasta, baked potato and a side salad with ranch dressing.....

 

This might become the next SJ buzzword, along with Tahoe and Plain Dealer -- Dr. Howard's post on the 1GreytWriter thread:
"Good luck, Godspeed and take the restaurant job. People won't stop eating any time soon."

 

I admire your gumption. I'm willing to say that many who've commented are old enough to be, gulp, a young father or youthful uncle who's been in your shoes. I myself had lots of networking in college, a portfolio stacked with clips covering college games, graduated from a great journalism school and had contacts at big newspapers for my work in college. But so did four other guys I graduated with. So did three guys who graduated ahead of us and five more in the class behind us.

That said, we all went separate ways, all covering preps, and became even better writers. We became the official statisticians at football and hoops games. No matter where you go, you need to be a good writer. A great storyteller. I'd rather read a really good story on someone than a gamer from an event that I already know what happened.

You can't always get what you want, and covering preps doesn't apparently appeal to you. But if you're a good writer, you can find a job, somewhere. Writing is a fabulous skill to have. And if you think preps isn't that interesting, you should try the other side of the industry where it's car wrecks, forest fires, city council meetings, school board elections, shady local politics and boring ass ground breaking sand ribbon cuttings. You'd beg for a Friday night football game, and then enjoy your Saturdays off and watch 15 college games on TV instead of just one live and another on the tube.

That said, good luck in your ventures!

 

I want to chime in here, not because I have some wealth of experience that could help GA as I am just shy of turning 27, but because reading all the comments have inspired me a bit.

To an extent, I share GA's lack of interest in covering prep sports, and while I have a personal goal of covering college football or basketball as a beat, I do not disregard the value prep coverage offers.

When I was in college (a mid-major in metro Detroit), I interned for Ann Arbor Radio covering Michigan sports (was hired part-time) and The Oakland Press as a features intern. I served as sports editor for my senior year at the college paper and hosted a sports show on the radio station. With the exception of some stuff for A2 Radio, I never covered high school sports to any degree until after college. My beat for the college paper was the club hockey team (before becoming sports editor), which had won national ACHA titles and actually sent Penn State out of the league in their last season. I covered the D1 basketball teams and soccer as well once I became sports editor.

When I graduated in December 2012, I was hired as the sports editor of a weekly in Effingham, IL. I only stayed for 5 months (January through June of 2013) before being laid off due to financial issues, but I had a blast covering the prep teams in the area. I was only covering three high schools, but each school had unbelievably good basketball and baseball teams, many of which made deep postseason runs. I was in charge of reporting, photography, page design and everything in between with minimal help from the rest of the staff. And unlike the people I worked with, I was active on Twitter and Facebook during games and interviews, which helped me build a small following in my short time there.

I spent the summer of 2013 freelancing back home in Michigan before I accepted a job as a paginator with a newspaper in southwest Michigan, about 30 miles north of South Bend. I took the job because of it's location to Chicago (where I'd like to end up) and the fact that I have no daily newspaper experience. However, I have been looking for new opportunities lately because I want to get back into reporting but have yet to land more than two interviews to become a reporter. Since October of 2014, I've been offered ten jobs doing the same thing I am doing now. Page design and copy editor is not something I want to be doing as a career.

Fortunately for me, after the new year, I have been offered some reporting assignments for our sports desk when needed, so I do have some recent preps clips coming in. I'd highly advise staying away from a strictly desk job though. I like my coworkers a lot and am treated well, but sometimes feel as though I am trapped.

And I also agree with many previous posters about some issues with covering college and pro sports. I run a website of my own which I started in March 2013, and have been able to build a brand for myself with it and given myself plenty of opportunities. I do not make money off of it, but I am gaining experience many others at my level don't really get. I cover Notre Dame football and basketball for the site, along with some other beats. I love the atmosphere when I am at these games and the people I meet, but there's no denying I am one of anywhere from 20-100 different people there, writing the same story and taking the same photos. And just because I am doing this all based on my own skill and network, it's not really helping me get looked at as much either for those higher profile gigs.

I'm still searching for that sports reporting gig that will help me get my foot in the door and heading towards what I want to be doing. I figure if I start at the prep level and continue to build my personal brand – both through my site and whichever outlet I am working for – I will eventually make it to where I want to be.

Apologizes for sharing a brief life story with everyone.

 

I know I'm referring to a different era, but I remember reading Marty Glickman's autobiography (he was Marv Albert's mentor, for those youngsters who don't know who Glickman was. And don't ask, "Who's Marv Albert?")

Anyway, one thing that stuck out to me in Glickman's book was how, especially early in his TV career, but even for decades after, he would cover small-time things such as Little League, youth track meets, recreation bowling, etc. He wrote that he felt that he owed it to everyone, including the participants, his viewers, his bosses, and himself, to approach each event with the same professionalism that he gave when he was working a big-time professional or college event.

Thst, to me, is the same lesson that can be applied to today's world. As much as you may hate the preps, approach it with the same professionalism that you would if it was the pros or college in the meantime and apply to every gig that you think you'd rather have and hope they take you on.

 

Good advice until the end. Most of the preps guys I know cover a Friday night football game! then either cover a Saturday game or are in the office taking calls. Hardly sitting at home and watching 15 games on Saturdays.

 

I think he was talking about working the news side and being able to watch more than one game on Saturday.

 

I still think, six pages in, that people seem to think that the industry today is the industry they broke into. You have to start as high up as you can, and that probably means avoiding preps if you can, unless it's at what you would consider a destination paper. I sure wouldn't take a job covering preps at a paper that didn't have traveling college or pro beats, or both, to move into. I finally was able to parlay it into a college beat, but it was as the fourth or fifth guy at the shop on that beat, with no raise jumping from one paper to another, and it took a lot of years and an embarrassing number of unanswered resume and clips packets sent out. You just don't get noticed.

Can you learn a lot on the prep beat about working sources, hustling for stories, and working with public records? Sure you can. After a few months, though, the returns will be quite diminishing. You are as likely, however, to stagnate while handling gamers with kid gloves and writing about athletes who just aren't very interesting. (There are, of course, exceptions. But the average high schooler hasn't lived enough to be interesting.)

 

I agree that you should start as high as you can. For most, though, that still won't be very high, and the original poster's point, I think, was that he doesn't want to start at the bottom and work as hard as he might have to do without much recognition, or without feeling, himself, like what he does matters.

In fact, it seems that he pretty much does want what, for many people, would be a destination job, probably preferably at a destination paper, right out of the gate, and that just doesn't usually happen. Personally, I think he has no idea how much immediate tweeting, blogging, photographer and videographer work and whatever other digitally-related posts of stuff he's going to have to do these days, along with whatever writing, desk/design work and broadcasts he might have to do -- this is what's making the business even more all-consuming (and unappealing) than it even used to be. Which is saying something.

One last thing: I actually would probably avoid a preps gig at a destination paper, unless you like/don't mind preps, of course, unless you are in a top-notch internship program there. And in that case, you probably will not be put on a preps beat, anyway. It is easier to get buried in preps at a destination paper than it is for that to happen at a mid-size or lesser one. Preps is truly the bottom there, and, especially these days, has no priority in comparison to non-preps beats.

 

One question for the OP: What size of a publication (online or print) are you expecting to land at? Are you not interested in covering Division II, Division III or FCS schools?

Sorry, that's two questions.

 

I think there are several layers of fail here:

1) The assumption is that a newspaper is going to actually hire you, or anyone else for that matter

2) The assumption that newspapers are still going to cover professional and college sports with staffers and not AP

3) The assumption that newspapers will still be credentialed now that major colleges and pro teams have figured out they can cover themselves and get the information with their spin on it on their own web-sites written by their own people.