As I’ve gotten older I realized I love journalism because I’m nosy. I was having dinner with my mom when I told her this and she, with a straight face, looked at me and nodded. Almost as if it was a surprise it took me almost 21 years to realize how nosy I am.
There isn’t one instant that made me pick journalism, I instead feel it was a bunch of invisible strings that pulled me into the field.
I grew up loving sports, watching and playing the bench. As a kid, I was a massive University of Arizona fan. This is ironic now since I’ve earned a sports journalism degree from ASU and am currently pursuing my master’s. No one in family attended Arizona so there are no family ties. Both my mom and sister earned their degrees from ASU Online.
I came to Cronkite wanting to be a sports commentator for college basketball. I remember in Sports Production my freshman year I had to anchor a “sportscast”. I didn’t think much of it since I would sometimes anchor my high school newscast.
I’m sitting at the anchor desk in the practice studio, sweating like it’s 118 degrees outside because I was so nervous. Once class was over that day I decided I didn’t like being in front of the camera and wanted to work behind the scenes. About a year later I decided to focus on becoming a broadcast producer.
I believe if I want to become a good producer I should learn different skills. Not be good at those skills but to have an understanding of those skills. I have been fortunate to have been working in a newsroom the past year.
I originally started as a Sports Intern for Arizona’s Family 3TV/5CBS. During my internship, I would shoot, edit and write highlights for various sporting events. I was very fortunate that everyone I worked with enjoyed having fun during newscasts, so a couple of times we would change our “play of the day” to “slay of the day” because I constantly said “slay.” I think one of my favorite sports highlights I wrote was during the Stanley Cup playoffs. During game 4 between the Kraken and Avalanche, I wrote “ding dong it’s Daniel Sprong.” It made the air and it has to this day been my favorite thing I wrote and not just because I’m a fan of the Kraken.
Once that internship ended I was offered a part-time position as a writer for Good Morning Arizona, the morning show for Arizona’s Family. My day went from working 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. to now I work 3 a.m. to 7 a.m.
There are many struggles I feel the world of journalism has faced, from people lacking trust to people not caring about journalism in general and relying on social media for all their information. There is nothing wrong with getting news from social media, it’s a great tool and can sometimes provide information quicker than traditional news. The issue with getting information from social media is sometimes it’s not true or it is partially true. Or sometimes people take their opinions and push them as newsworthy. Nothing is wrong with opinions as long as the reader and view know they are opinions and not facts.
I hope to gain from this class how to write better. I’m not a strong writer and struggle with spelling and grammar. When I write scripts I always write them in a document to catch spelling a grammar mistakes before I put them into ENPS. A few times I’ve misspelled something in the font or the script and it has airred with the typos.
