How to Become a Sportswriter

If you like sports, digging up information and writing, sportswriting can be a rewarding career.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Computers
• Spiral Notebooks
• Portable Tape Recorders
• Newspaper Subscriptions
• ESPN - The Magazine
• Sports Illustrated Magazines

1. Take as many writing courses as possible in high school and college because strong English skills are essential. Work on your high school and college newspaper, too.

2. Keep in mind that, as in other branches of journalism, every subject will come in handy: history, political science, biology, etc. Major in journalism in college only if the journalism department gives you time to take lots of outside courses; if you can, make it a liberal-arts major with a journalism minor.

3. Learn to type. Very few sportswriters learn shorthand, which is a mistake; they miss a lot in interviews, and tape-recording and then transcribing is too slow.

4. Learn about sports: what constitutes a 300 game in bowling, how to do a box score in baseball, what three events make up the Triple Crown in horse racing. Watch and read about as many contests as possible.

5. Remember that apart from school newspapers, a great place to start is to cover high school sports for a local paper. Most papers are anxious to find people willing to stalk the sidelines of Friday-night high school football games; it might result in only a three-paragraph story, but it's a foot in the door.

6. Keep up to date by reading "Editor & Publisher" magazine; its classified-ad section almost always lists openings in sports departments around the country. Subscribe to the Columbia Journalism Review as well.

7. Become a better sportswriter by reading good writers - and not just in the newspaper sports sections and sports magazines. Most of the best sportswriters read widely: mainstream novels, mysteries, articles on politics, etc.

Tips & Warnings

• Sportswriters must be neutral, objective and fair. Keep opinions out of news stories, but if you're a columnist, be prepared to praise or blast teams and athletes, depending on the circumstances.

• Stretch your writing muscles by trying to create similes and metaphors. Take a cliché or common expression and try to give it a clever twist (instead of "He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn," one "Sports Illustrated" writer wrote, "He couldn't throw a ball into the Grand Canyon while standing on the edge").

• If you're going into the profession for free tickets and other freebies, forget it. Journalism ethics, enforced at most publications, forbids the accepting of gifts.

• Athletes, coaches and managers are usually easy to deal with, because they are (a) doing something they love and (b) want recognition. However, they can also be difficult - even nasty - after losing or being criticized.

• Sportswriting is not as glamorous as some imagine. Deadline pressure takes its toll, the money isn't great (except for the few at the top) and travel for some beats (pro basketball, for example) can be onerous.

• Women sportswriters are accepted more readily than a few years ago, but they still are resented in some quarters.