Bleacher Report's Advanced Program in Sports Media

Yeah I thought this discussion was starting to sound familiar.

Your "18,000 circulation" college paper, where you print 18,000 copies and dump them in piles around campus for people to glance at while they walk across the quad, is not quite the same thing as working at a real newspaper where you have 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 real readers who pay real money to get that paper.

"Managing" a staff of 10 college kids working for free and living off loans and/or mom and dad, is not anything like managing a real budget and people with real jobs.

People are not just trying to be dicks when they fail to be impressed by your college experience. It doesn't mean you aren't the next Jeff Pearlman, it just means that you haven't proven anything yet.

That said, if the Bleacher Report thing is enticing to you, then just do it. If it sucks, then quit. Same goes for any job, really.

 

Yes, do your own research. That's what this business is about. If you can't be bothered to look up a way to contact someone - and I can immediately think of three other direct methods of contact outside of email - then how am I, as an editor, supposed to trust you to do your research and the necessary legwork to contact someone for a story?

 

Didn't you get the memo? The best way to reach the top of Bleacher Report is to go work somewhere else, be really good, then get hired by Bleacher Report for all the good work you did at other outlets.

 

I haven't done it, but I'd say go ahead and do it if you're interested.

A 12-week internship can't hurt anything, and you might pick up some skills specific to digital/online journalism, and that would be good. Those are what you're after, regardless of where you get them.

I have to say, though, that that promotional article on the program is rather light and very generic regarding information on what, exactly, you would gain from doing the work, and how you would go about it. Which is why, I suspect, you are asking us if anyone else has been through the program.

The part that talks about how you can get credit for it -- whatever it is -- is more substantial than the rest of it.

 

I would imagine credit would ultimately be determined by the school and not BR.

That said, if you're interested, go for it. As shitty a future as it looks like, this is the future.

 

At least some people realize life is too short to work like a dog and get paid in scraps. Good for you.

 

Nick Moyle (@NRMoyle) hired by San Antonio Express-News as digital sports producer from Bleacher Report.

I don't know Nick, but just wanted to add two cents that major papers do look at BR as a legitimate site to hire employees from...

 

My advice? You never know who reads these messages boards and who they know. The industry is a lot smaller than you think, so coming on here and being combative to everyone else isn't really a bright move. It's not exactly difficult for employers to piece together who you are based on threads. Maybe that's why you keep getting radio silence. Just my two cents...

 

When I was in my early 20s I signed up for this board and I think it was about a year before I had the nerve to post anything because I didn't want to piss off or appear to be an idiot to anyone who might otherwise hire me.

 

So as someone who actually participated in this program a few years ago, I can say from first hand experience that sports editors at major metro's laughed at this program when I listed it on my resume. I mean literally laughed at it.

The experience itself was pretty miserable. They basically assign you a bunch of articles on topics that you may or may not know anything about, provide minimal feedback and generally don't seem to care about the quality of the work you end up producing. Not to mention, every single one of the clips you produce will be more or less useless to you as you attempt to find whichever dream job you think is waiting for you out there once this program ends.

If you want to write on the side for some extra beer money, then yeah definitely do it. I wound up writing for the breaking news team on Saturday mornings, made 80 bucks or so in a day and went to the bar that night with a little more cash than most of my friends had. But if you're looking for this program to do anything more than that for you, you're going to be excessively disappointed.

And a side note, I also was a sports editor at a D1, had two internships at major metro's and another internship at a smaller paper in a top 5 market. The only job I could get paid $12 per hour, halfway across the country covering a mid-major program for a tiny local newspaper. I could barely get an interview anywhere else. I did the job for 8 months, hated it for the most part and quit. So I'd say stick to your guns and try not to go too small, but my experience was that ultimately you're not going to have much of a choice unless you beat the odds by a pretty substantial margin. Good luck man.

 

Well, that settles that.

Provably and demonstrably, even!

 

Yikes, sounds like a headache.

I appreciate the feedback. They're going to phone screen me Wednesday, so I'll be sure to ask about any changes the program has made recently in light of feedback.

At this point, I sure as hell am not putting this on a resume. The weekly cash on the side is still nice, like you said, and the time commitment isn't much. Maybe I'd learn something about digital media, but even that sounds like a stretch.

Worst comes to worst, I give it a shot and drop a month in if it stinks for me.