A bit about my project
BYU-Idaho’s Scroll, is apart of I-COMM Student Media. As the school newspaper and as a practicum opportunity for students, it is supposed to give students real world experience after they leave college.
For me, Scroll has been what my college experience is all about. I will leave college with nearly 3 years of professional experience working for my college newspaper.
In meeting different individuals who are journalism emphases, I have seen that a large percentage of them are interested in sports journalism. This got me thinking, why doesn’t Scroll have a sports section? This would give students who are interested in sports journalism the opportunity to gain real world experience before they graduate.
For my senior project, I started a sports section for Scroll. I spent this semester writing different types of articles to give format for the types of articles in the section. I also created a beat sheet for Scroll to use to know what this section will cover, and I planned and taught a lesson on sports journalism to my Scroll class to help them understand what it takes to be a sports journalist.
I am excited to lay the foundation for this opportunity for future students to be able to gain real world experience as a sports journalist before leaving into the real world of sports journalism.
My presentation
My work
This project gave me a lot of really awesome opportunities. It helped me to utilize my skills as a writer, reporter and brush up on my photography skills. This project pushed me outside of my area of expertise as I don’t know much about sports. The following are some of the stories that I wrote for this project.
Yoeli Childs: Living the basketball dream
Salt Lake City Stars reverse month-long losing streak
First session of intramural sports end with intense championship games
A night of championships commences at the BYU-Idaho Center
Players splash their way to victory at battleship tournament
RecSports features cornhole and Spikeball tournament
In addition to these six stories, I wrote 7 others. They were a mix of feature stories, event covers and sports games or tournaments. I also presented a lesson on Sports journalism to my Scroll class. This included my personal experience as well as tips for going forward as sports journalists. The link to that lesson can be found here.
Finally, I created a beat sheet for future Scroll classes to use in carrying out Sports Journalism. That sheet looks like this:
I really hope this project can mean more throughout future semesters. I enjoyed writing about and exploring the world of sports and I know that giving students the opportunity to gain experience in sports journalism before they go into the professional world will do exactly what Scroll was intended for.