“It’s multitasking, but just in your brain though. So you’re a crazy person in the inside, but you’re trying to make sure that the person that you’re talking to knows that you’re listening, but in your head you’re thinking ‘okay I can go this way, I can go this way, I’m listening to this’…It’s multitasking full throttle.”
Sports is generally not known for having high caliber reporting. In fact, most of the time when I’m watching I’m amazed at how boring the questions seem that are being asked on the sidelines. But despite this perceived laid back nature there is a ton of work that goes into sports reporting. I’m talking stats. I’m talking about demanding an interview from someone that doesn’t want to talk to you right now. I’m talking about trying to say something intelligent while not overwhelming the interviewee and trying to keep everything under 30 seconds. There’s a whole lot that goes into it. And that’s just the sideline reporting side of things. Today we speak with Angela Lauren, who has been there and done that with just about every job in the sports reporter field.
“You know that that’s the interview you want to get at the end and you do my favorite part, they call it “the 50 yard sprint”, from the sideline, right when the game is over because you need to be sure you grab that player before another station does or before they go to the locker room.”
“You never want somebody to be watching you and thinking ‘I could definitely be doing what she’s doing’. When you hear a vanilla, safe question and you think to yourself ‘I could have asked a better question than that’…You don’t want anyone to watch you and think that because that means that you’re not doing the best job you could be doing.”
Interview Contents
3:45 - The road to becoming a sports reporter.
9:00 - Local sports reporting.
10:30 - Post game sideline interviews.
13:00 - Building relationships with players, coaches and programs.
14:15 - Bad questions being asked on the sideline.
17:00 - Needing to use stats as a female sports reporter.
21:00 - The freelance world.
25:00 - Finding and making your own story.
30:30 - The most important job in freelance reporting, and the most time consuming job.
34:00 - What makes for a good interview?
45:00 - Sports reporters being able to speak their mind.
51:00 - Pay.
55:00 - Becoming one of the best.
58:30 - The ways to get started.
Links
THIS EPISODE WAS MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Roxanna
Michelle & Jim Wortner
Janelle Swanson
Jimmy Seymour
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