Traveling as a Sports Journalist

Video Transcript

"I'm Jamal Spencer for Expert Village, here at ABC 3 here in Lansing, and we're going to talk about how to be a successful sports broadcaster. One of the blessings and actually curses of this business is that you travel a lot. There will be games, there will be big events, there will be outdoor things you got to go deep into the woods to cover. There are tons of events that travel and require you to move around, so if you love to travel, this is a great business, but at the same time remember it's going to take you away from your family, it's going to take you away from your friends, but it's what you get paid to do. When you travel you have to be prepared. When we do college football, we'll go to the Big 10 schools: Wisconsin; Iowa; Penn State; Minnesota - schools that may be really far from where you are. So you either are going to drive, or you're going to fly. If you don't like to fly, you have to drive, and that can be 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 hour drives. You have to prepare yourself mentally to take long trips, but you also have to be prepared to reap the reward. When you make a long trip and you are the only T.V. station from your area at the game, that means a lot to the players, it means a lot to the organization that says "Hey, this guy's with us, he's one of us." Even though you're a media member and you're supposed to be impartial and non-biased, the players generally appreciate it when you travel to talk to them and get the story. That's your job, you're supposed to travel. You're supposed to get out there, find the story, bring the story back to the people in your viewing area. But you have to be prepared. Like I said, there will be games, there will be outdoors events, there will be lots of things that require you to get up and relocate. Be it a train, plane or automobile, you're going to have to get going. One of the things you've got to love about this business is there are sports all over the world, all over the country that you can cover. You just got to pick where you want to go."