Growing Opportunities in Sports Journalism
Fear not sports reporting students! There is a job market out there for you. That was the message expressed by the panelists at The Hurry-Up Offense sports writers discussion at Texas State Mass Comm Week.
Discussing the current state of the sports media industry, veteran sports journalists Jeff Howe, Tim Griffin, Kirk Bohls, and David Chancellor participated in a panel discussion for Texas State Mass Comm Week.
The panel stressed the expanding opportunities in sports journalism. “There are still a lot of jobs and you can still make a damn good living being a sports journalists,” Chancellor said.
They also addressed the idea that sports journalism is a dying industry. “People will always want to read about sports,” Griffin said. “There will always be a market for what we do.”
“Every newspaper guy up here has heard (that you’re entering a dead industry) over a 100,000 times,” Chancellor said. “And that may or may not be true in 100 year or 50 years, but it’s not dying right now.”
A great way to break into the industry, according to the panel, is to cover high school sports for local newspapers. “I talk to so many kids that just turn their nose up at [starting at a small newspaper],” Howe said. “Why not? That’s how I got started.”
The panel also discussed the problem of diminishing access to coaches and players, especially in College Football.
“I don’t even know if it’s so much limited access, it’s almost seems like “no access,” Bohls said. “It gets more and more restrictive all the time.”
Bohls said the industry has changed from the days when reporters could easily get sit down interviews with players and coaches. Limited access he said, “detracts from us, and our ability to do our job.”
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