Breaking into the Business. What to do?

Piggybacking off of boyz's original question...I am a recent graduate in the broadcasting field, yet I can not find a job anywhere. Do you guys have any advice or is there a similar "sportsjournalists.com" out there for broadcasters, because seeing all these jobs in one place is really great. Good luck to all you recent graduates...and veterans, unfortunatly, looking for jobs right now.

 

We are an equal opportunity SportsJournalists.com for broadcasters too. Especially those who have Chris Farley in their avatar.

 

Best advice on this thread so far. I've read some advice on this thread along the lines of, "Work for free if you have to!"

Do not do that. Your work has value, and the idea that you should be providing it for free out of some obligation to your calling is beyond ludicrous. Obviously, a formal unpaid internship is something different, but don't you dare go cover games for free or write for something like Bleacher Report for free. You're not only devaluing yourself, you are slapping the profession you want to enter right in the teeth.

If you really want to pursue this full-time, I have always suggested a five-year rule. Give it five years and if it isn't working, start looking into another field, particularly something that requires a professional graduate degree. Law. Business. Medicine. Architecture. Whatever sounds appealing (for God's sake, not a humanities PhD, however. You already spent your dream/calling capital by that point). If that sounds risky, find the Slate article that says that high-level professional degrees are a tremendous investment even in rough economic times.

Keep in mind also that covering daily sports for a newspaper is an actual "calling" for about 1/10th of 1 percent of the people who actually think it is. I can think of one person who I'm close to in the business who I absolutely believe that covering a beat for a daily product is a calling for, and people who know us would probably agree 100 percent. The other 99.9999 percent of the people could easily find happiness doing something else.

If you want to stay in this in some capacity, be creative. I'm finishing up my second book while I work on a law degree, for example. I understand the Malcolm Gladwell theory that you have to pick one thing and practice the hell out of it to be successful, but not everyone has that luxury. There are bills to pay in the meantime. Plus, what if you aren't that 1/10th of 1 percent that I mentioned, and you picked the wrong calling?

Also, prepare for the apocalypse. Zag and I agreed on something.

 

Dang. Far too many people are posting something similar on a variety of threads.

I must be growing into a softie in my old age or something - I need to stop taking this medication for a while and go back to being a mean-spirited prick..... ;D

(though you shouldn't call me that, it is against the rules....)

 

I think there can be ONE and only ONE reason to write for Bleacher Report: You cover your favorite team because you are too cheap to buy a ticket.

And yes, I have done this... Shame me if you must but I figure if they are handing out credentials to 16-year olds why should I drop 90 bucks to on see my team when I can write a 300-word "We Wuz Screwed" column and get in the game for free.

 

The truth of the matter is your writing is exactly what you make of it, but you've got to do it every day if you want to stay sharp. Bleacher Report is as good as any place on the web to do it.

Look, I'm not going to shill for them and, to be fair, I thought the exact same thing about the site when I first saw it. But I started writing for them in June when they did the CBS thing everyone hated so much and got in with them that way. Since then they've gotten me on national radio, gave me much more exposure, and actively put my work out there.

Would I start from scratch there tomorrow without the promise I got that my work would be featured? Probably not (and I'd stop in a second if I thought they weren't living up to their end of the bargain), but you're not going to improve as a writer doing two gamers a week.

Blogging is not ideal by any stretch but it's better than not writing. I will say that blogs are hit or miss and you need to watch out who you associate yourself with. I put a lot of thought into writing for B/R because of the reputation they have but I was pleasantly surprised by the guys who run the site and I take it as seriously as I would if my work was being put on the website of any major daily. I couldn't give a crap if the site is full of pre-teen kids who couldn't tell you who Heywood Broun was to save their Nintendo DS collection—my writing is my writing.

Will I keep it up? I don't know. Like I said before I'm in the same boat as you, but these are life decisions. Are you comfortable with the very real possibility of not making more than $40 grand a year until you're almost 30, having to move several times and doing the work of two men for half the price of one? Because that's the price of it, right now.

 

FYP

 

Nope. That's not what we do.

Better readjust even that expectation.

 

Do yourself a favor: Never, ever tell anybody in the business who knows your real name that you think this is okay.

 

Noted. But I just looked at it like I was being "paid" the cost of admission I wasn't paying for covering the game. And the "we wuz screwed" was an exaggeration. I covered the game, wrote a gamer, column, and feature story.

 

Well, that's not how you should look at it. You aren't getting "paid" with free admission to a game. You are being extended a working credential. You're young, and I can appreciate the excitement, but if you want to be a fan, be a fan. Don't go into this business because you think it seems super radical awesome to "go to games for free."

 

There's a lot of good advice on here, but I'll add a little bit of a different perspective.

I graduated from college a couple years ago, worked at the student paper for 4 years, sports editor for 2 and had a good internship. I actually got a job in about two months, but it was for the podunk press and I was making 10/hr. Not exactly what I paid all that tuition money for, but I was willing to grind.

After about a year at the paper, I realized I was wasting my time. The only other job oppenings out there were offering the same pay my gig did and I wasn't willing to work for 10/hr forever. I also realized that I wanted a family someday. I want to watch my kids play sports and do recitals and all that jazz. Something you just can't do when you work nights and weekends. I also realized that my dream of covering a major D1 college football beat was probably decades away, if ever possible.

So after a year in the business, I left it behind. Right now, I'm in graduate school working on an MBA in marketing to try and parlay my sports experience into a job in sports marketing. I know a guy that took the exact same path, and now lives in a 3/4 million dollar home on a lake. I can deal with that. And check this out, while I'm in school, I'm doing writing for the local paper, for a website, and a sports magazine to get by. I'm getting the chance to do something I like, minus the 30 hours a night sitting at my desk answering phones and explaining to cranky moms why Timmy didn't get into the paper that night.

There's plenty of ways to keep writing, but man, with the way things are right now and the way they're headed, I'd seriously consider changing "sports writer" from a career to a hobby and find something you can do that you'll get paid.