14th
TELL ME A STORY
I was always told that the only way to improve as a writer is to never stop writing. Write for fun. Write for class. Write for work. Write on napkins. Write on tattered pieces of paper. Write on computers. Write creatively. Write journalistically. Write freely. In my near three years of college, I have tried to do just that: Write — and write some more. Through my work experience, I’ve learned how to write three stories in a day. I’ve learned how to construct a men’s basketball game recap on a 25-minute deadline. And I’ve learned how to shape 11 different sources and a book’s-worth of information into a 3,000-word story.
Indeed, having the opportunity to write for one of the best college newspapers in the country, The Daily Iowan, one of the up-and-coming football websites on the Internet,The National Football Post, and the now-nonexistent Washington Times sports department all helped me mature as a college journalist.
But now, with just over a year left in my formal education, I’m being told the changing journalism landscape no longer has a role for me, an aspiring enterprise sports writer. No one reads long-form journalism anymore, the critics say. Beat coverage and blogging are the future of sports writing, they snark. This, of course, frustrates me. Clearly, they don’t read Wright Thompson or Gary Smith or Joe Posnanski. What happened to simply telling a story? The journalism world may be changing, but the stories — ones that matter, ones that are worth months of time and thousands of words — are still out there. It would be a shame if a plummeting economy and a shrinking printed medium got in the way of them being told.
CONTACT: scott.tierney89@gmail.com
