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

I was in preps, freelancing and on staffs, through college and years after that. All told, about 10 years. I soured on it for a variety of reasons. It concerns me that you soured on it without even having to do it yet.

But what I did to get out, once I was at my preps breaking point, was to apply to pretty much every gig I could. Eventually, I got out, and I'll do everything in my power not to go back.

This is not a judgement on those who do a great job covering preps. It just wasn't for me after a while. It is, however, a great place to find features and tell great stories that can be all your own. That rarely happens at the higher levels.

 

Yeah, you may be undervaluing the impact your work has at the prep, small-town level in regards to your audience. Covering the Power 5 football game, once you look past the fancy press box and mediocre provided meal, you kind of get lost in the crowd. You're just another guy covering the game. With preps, you are the definitive voice in a lot of cases.

You can do great work anywhere, not just the big metro.

 

Some of the very best in the business started writing preps. You can move up quickly if you are good.

Most newspapers are going to want to have someone with daily beat experience to cover colleges or pros. Or someone with a track record covering high schools and other things that shows a lot of promise.

The internet may be different with the recruiting sites and all that.

Some of this has been said or hinted at in other posts, but the very best way to land a job that you want is to have good connections who are hiring for the job or who can recommend you for the job. The more people in the business you can impress the better.

And, yes, you have to do what you want. But no one likes a whiner. I would be very hesitant to hire someone who said he doesn't want to cover preps. Maybe it shows ambition. But to me it also shows a lack of imagination and perhaps a need to be spoon fed the information.

 

"You think you’re too interesting a person to have a shitty job." - Louis CK

 

I think people are reflexively thinking that the OP thinks he's "above" preps. Is that really the case? He doesn't like them. I wouldn't want to cover soccer. I don't think I'm above soccer. I just don't like it.

 

During my time in the business, I did some preps and some college. All my clips from covering a college beat are just proof that I could do it, but there isn't a single truly memorable piece in the bunch. The best stuff I wrote, the stuff I won awards for, was all in preps. This isn't because I enjoyed preps sports (point of fact: I loathed most of them). Instead, I saw the opportunity the beat provided me. I was in deep with several local programs and had access to pretty much anything. That let me tell some very interesting and different stories, and not just the usual "kid with cancer" or "kid in a car wreck" ones mentioned above. There are much better stories to tell if you really dive deep and give it a chance.

Perhaps the reason I don't have many great college samples was I wasn't good enough for the college beat. But I really believe it is because you have more opportunities to do different things with preps. With any college or pro beat, you have to carve through several layers of bullshit to get to anything of substance. At least in my experience.

I'd encourage the OP to give preps a chance. Make yourself passionate about covering the shit out of that beat. You'll be surprised.

 

That's not the same.

Saying you want to be a big-time sports writer but don't want to cover preps is kind of like saying you want to an H&R Block bigshot but don't want to deal with people's taxes.

 

I would bet most writers on college and pro beats, especially at metro papers, did not start on preps.

 

I kind of doubt that. Some, but I don't think most.

I would also say probably 99.9 percent of sports writers and columnists have written about preps in some fashion.

 

If I was in your position, I would freelance for websites, magazines, newspapers, etc... It exposes you to a broader base of editors. Go outside sports, way outside. There's a magazine or website dedicated to everything nowadays. Pick 10 or 15 you want to work for and stay in front of them. It takes awhile—a long while—to get consistent work, but your young and single (I assume) and you can move anywhere. Pick a biggish city you want to move to, tend bar, move into a slum and write your ass off. Living poor and struggling will make you a better writer and person.

 

I can think of two big-time people who covered a lot of preps at the start: TV's Rachel Nichols, when she was an intern in South Florida; and national baseball writer Jon Heyman, whose first job was at a small paper in Illinois.

It seems that covering preps would be a near-certainty for those who start at smaller papers. Then again, I've worked with a number of reporters over the years who were hired by larger papers right out of school and were placed on non-major league beats (local colleges or participant sports, for example) with minimal prep responsibilities. But the most common route always seemed to be starting at a smaller paper and covering a lot of high schools, then moving on after a few years.

The place I started was small but not tiny, and while we all were expected to cover high schools, there were many opportunities to cover other sports.

 

It'll also leave you poor and struggling.

Listen, for every freelancer who hits it big and becomes a star magazine writer or takeout specialist for a major dot com, the rest are scraping by and getting their asses handed to them on their taxes every year. No benefits, no consistent salary. The quality of life takes a major hit.

I've done the freelance thing. The freedom's nice for a while. Then the bills stack up and real life hits and suddenly it sucks ass.