A (very brief) look at the man behind the blue and white Web page.
Even, after spending a good several months writing professionally, I won’t be the first one to say I’m a “veteran” journalist. But I did learn a few things. One, that a common “work week” is never less than 50 hours; Two, that people will absolutely hate your guts; Three, that people will then turn around and be your best friend, when it suits their agenda; Finally, that no matter how hard your work, or how good you are at what you do, you’ll never make a lot of money being a journalist. Don’t take that the wrong way. Writing books, making TV appearances and giving a speech or two to a group of students will always grab you some extra dough. But unless you’re working at ESPN, SI or other major sports news outlets, you’re not going to have a lot of time to do those other things I mentioned.
There is a funny aspect to all of this. Like most other careers in a capitalist economy, the more you make, the less you do. It’s no different in sports journalism.
When you’re trying to make it for yourself in this business, you’ll do anything to get your name out there. That means you’ll cover anything, any time, anywhere, usually with little or no reward, other than logging one more clip into your record. I wasn’t willing to do that. No; not after seeing people like Jeff Rice and Jenny Vrentas go from The Collegian to lucrative careers with the CDT and Newark Star-Ledger, respectively. Don’t get me wrong. I like them. I’ve never met them, so I don’t have anything to go on, but I don’t care either way for them. To me, they’re just products of the system we’re in.
I was a music major through my sophomore year at PSU. I then realized that you have to be wealthy to be a music major. I wasn’t wealthy, so I switched to a major that required little financial burden—journalism. Yes, that magical discipline, in which you only need a note pad, a pen, and maybe a digital recorder for $49.95. Compare that to what I needed to start my music performance major: Instrument (Euphonium), $5,500; Instrument maintenance/equipment, $300; Sheet Music, $50 per week; and most costly of all, practice time: 6-8 hours per day, minimum. You can’t hold a part-time job when you’re stuck in the basement of Music Building II for 40 hours per week. So, I switched.
It was a really good feeling when I graduated only one semester late. I could even say I graduated in the year I was supposed to. But that joy was short lived. I was soon working for my father (home improvement business), helping one of his friends flip a house in Paramus, NJ. (Remember, at that time, the housing market was still OK.) Meanwhile, other students were working for papers, news stations, and other actually journalism jobs. When Jeff Rice first started at the CDT, getting the PSU football beat the moment he stepped into their building, I realized my dream was doomed. I would never become PSU’s beat writer in the home-town paper every fan reads on game days. Oh well, poor me.
So I got a job with a paper in VA to pass the time. My beat was local government and civic events (basically homeowners’ associations meetings and grand openings of prestigious businesses like SUBWAY). The closest I got to covering sports was a few higher-profile high school games in the area, as the paper didn’t even really have a sports page outside of what I threw together as an experiment. My now-fiancé graduated from PSU in 2005, and was already down here teaching, which all worked out for us job-wise in the end.
Then I got real sick from my Crohn’s Disease, needing a Laparoscopic Ileocolic Resection at Mount Sinai in NYC. So I was out of work from the paper, with no health insurance (I was still on the company’s “probationary” period, which meant no benefits yet) and no income for more than a month. That was fun. Now, $75,000 later and still not back up to my starting weight of 162 lbs before the summer, I’m at a new job working for Loudoun County Public Schools. Unfortunately, one of the worst things for Crohn’s Disease is stress, and being a no-name journalist comes with a lot of that.
That’s where this blog comes in. I know, I took the longest possible route to get to my point, sorry. The beauty of today’s society is that anyone can strike gold at any point. No, I’m not going to quit my job and try to live off of Zombie Nation. That’s just plain idiotic. But why kill myself so that maybe, just maybe I get my résumé noticed by some paper or station in PA that needs a PSU beat reporter? Unless you’re someone like Rice or Vrentas, or don’t want any kind of life outside of your budding career, you’re doomed down the path I once thought promising.
This leads me back to the “system” we’re in. There are a few necessities that will land you the sports-writing job of your dreams: start early, and get in good with the right people. I cannot stress that first point enough. That’s actually my whole point. I didn’t start early enough. I remember walking into the Collegian offices in James Building for my interview/tryout. I said I wanted to cover PSU football. I’m surprised they didn’t just burst out laughing at me right then and there. The two editors at the time basically told me that I wasn’t next in line to cover PSU football, so I had no chance. Nice. So that’s how real newspapers are run, seniority over performance? Maybe I was working in another universe, but performance is everything in journalism. Apparently, the Collegian’s “club” mentality takes the former approach.
What was once a nice little writing career crashed and burned
