How to Become a Sports Columnist

You have been at your job as a sports writer for several years and you are comfortable in whatever assignment is sent your way--game coverage, feature stories, long exposes or short profiles. You can handle them all and your bosses know it. You want to move on to your dream job as a sports columnist. You have the opinions and interviewing skills, so it's time to show the world that you have a voice.

Instructions

1. Your attitude has to show up in your writing. The one thing you don't want to be as a columnist is namby-pamby, wishy-washy or bored. If you are at a particular baseball game and you have an opinion about a coach or player, take that opinion with you into the event and bring it with you into the locker room after the game. When you observe that player or talk to him face-to-face, perhaps your opinion will change. Either way, you will now have excellent fodder for a column. You may not like the way this athlete conducts himself and perhaps your venture to the locker room brought no reasonable explanation. Now it's time to write a column that points out the player's faults and what kind of impact they are having on the team.

2. Back up your opinion with facts that will help reasonable and interested readers see it your way. You will never convince everyone that you are right. However, if you present a certain point of view--positive or negative--and back it up with facts, you will at least have a reasonable chance of getting people to understand why you said what you did and perhaps even leading some of those readers to agree with your opinion.

3. Be multi-faceted as a columnist. Search out the story behind the story. A player may have overcome five long years in the minor leagues before he finally moved up to the majors and became a star. Everyone knows that story already. Perhaps nobody knows that during his five-year stint in the minor leagues he did volunteer work at the same prison his brother is living at as a result of a felony conviction. A column on the differing journeys of the two brothers would be fascinating to most readers.

4. Have the self-confidence and decency to show your face in a team's locker room after you have written something critical. You don't have to go up to the person you have wounded and say, "Here I am. What are you going to do about it?" That would be foolish and combative. But merely showing up it tells those in the lockerroom that you are not going to hide behind your computer. If somebody wants to question you or say something to you, they have that chance because you have showed that you have the guts to show up and are not afraid to give someone the chance to confront you. Your critics will be impressed with that even if they will never say anything about it.

5. Read other columnists to see how they do their job, but don't copy their topic or their style. You are reading their work to see if they can get their point across and how well they do it. Then ask yourself if your own opinions are as clear and concise. If they aren't, take the steps to make your column better. Always look at your own work from the point of view of the reader and make sure they are not wasting their time if they have decided to give your column the 10 to 15 minutes it may take to read and digest it. Always give it your best and never try to just fill space.

Tips & Warnings

• Write from your heart as much as possible. If you believe strongly about something the words will flow and the readers will understand and possibly agree (or disagree) with your opinion. The one thing you want is for your readers to be more involved and more concerned about a subject after reading one of your columns than before reading it.