Online Writing

Writing is probably my favorite aspect of media that I've been involved in, and I've been fortunate enough to have gained a lot of experience doing it.

I started by being the main writer for the SportsTalk Radio Network's website, which gave me exposure to journalistic online sports writing I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. After solely doing that for two years, I started my own personal blog for a few months to try and expand on what I had learned.

I found that I really enjoyed the freedom that format gave me - the ability write about what I wanted to and express my opinions was something that I loved and took great pride in.

Fortunately, I was noticed and hired by Chat Sports in October, a personalized sports news website based out of San Fransisco to cover the Duke Blue Devils and the Charlotte Bobcats. This wasn't a paid position, but it gave me the chance to attach my name with a larger company that would help get my work and name seen by more readers.

I have now grown to becoming one of their four featured writers, and I am the lead on Chat Sports' coverage of both NCAA Basketball and the NBA. I also largely contribute stories that cover college football and the NFL as well, all of which I really enjoy.

While I cover college basketball as a whole, my main focus was on the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is where I did some of my most rewarding work. Here's the link to the article I wrote that previewed the ACC's conference tournament that was held in Greensboro.

I didn't get to go cover the tournament, but watching and reporting on all the games was still a really fun experience.

My NBA coverage has been forced to pick up over the past month as the league gears up for the start of the playoffs, and my boss put me in charge of writing previews for each team that made the postseason. Here's the one I wrote about the Los Angeles Clippers, whom I picked to win the championship.

There are links at the bottom of the article to a few other team preview I have written, but you can check out everything I have written for Chat Sports on my writer profile page.

Because of all the experience I have gotten, I've found that writing is the one thing I'm more passionate about than anything else, and am heavily pursuing this career path.

Radio Experience

I came to the University of South Carolina with my mind set on doing television, but a spur of the moment opportunity opened my eyes to the world of sports radio.

One of my friends, who was already interning with the SportsTalk Radio Network, told me they were looking for someone who could work during their High School Scoreboard Show on Friday nights. I was looking for some extra money, so I thought it couldn't hurt.

Well, that job turned into a two and a half year internship with SportsTalk, the number one sports talk radio show in South Carolina and one of just three shows in the country who broadcast to a statewide audience, and I enjoyed ever minute of it.

Right from the start, my bosses were very hands off and threw me into the fire. I made plenty of mistakes, but I saw my radio skills improve greatly. My broadcast voice got a lot smoother, slower, and more natural, and I figured out how to write for my voice, which came in handy when I started doing television work in my broadcast classes.

As a result, I got a ton of experience doing everything from being a fill-in co-host, producing the entire show (which involves setting up interviews and essentially running everything behind the scenes), all of the preparation that is required before the show, covering USC's football team, doing live reporting, and even recording and producing my own on-air segments.

Here are two of those segments previewing football teams in the ACC and SEC before the season this past fall.

Boston College
Arkansas

Television News

Television work is something that I have only gotten hands-on experience with in the classes I have been exposed to here at South Carolina, but it's something that I've enjoyed doing. I did have an internship at WTVD in Durham, North Carolina a couple of years ago, but I received no hands-on training or experience there, so everything I learned has been a product of my classes here at school.

Here is one of the packages I did in Senior Semester, highlighting a national rise in robberies of pizza delivery workers across the nation.

It was a hard piece to do, having to track down people who have knowledge and are directly impacted by the trend, but I felt good about my finished product. This process also represents the many skills I've gained through learning television reporting that I can apply to my life and any future job I will have.

Time management is crucial when working on a deadline, and having to plan out what needs to be done in advance is a big step in being successful at that. I've also learned how to work with and around other people's schedules, as well as how to efficiently work as a team with my classmates.