By Joe Sullivan
Boston Globe
Baltimore Sun sports editor Ron Fritz and his two deputies, Andy Knobel and Matt Bracken, obviously have an eye for talent. The proof is Seth Boster of the University of Missouri and Daniel Gallen of the University of Maryland. Both spent this summer working at the Sun and now they’ve been named as winners of this year’s APSE Scholarships.
The other winners were Alexa Ard of the University of Nevada and Sarah Barshop of Marquette University. Each student will receive $1,500. APSE awards the scholarships to help motivate talented students to pursue a career in sports journalism. Collegiate sports journalists entering their sophomore, junior or senior years are eligible, and the winners are selected based on the students' journalistic work, their academic record, financial need and geography.
Fritz and the Sun have benefited this summer from two ambitious, hard-working students. “Both are very bright, talented, come from terrific journalism schools and work extremely hard,’’ Fritz said. “I see them succeeding. They’re wise beyond their years, get everything about social media, what we look for in a story and how to get it to the audience.’’
Boster and Gallen say they are friends, but their work for the Sun kept them from socializing too much. “I always thought I was a journalism nut,’’ said Boster, “then I met Daniel. I said, ‘Holy cow this kid is on another level.’ One night we were together and we stayed up to probably three in the morning talking about what we want to do in sports journalism.’’
“I’ve been bummed that we never got to hang out a lot,’’ Gallen said. “We’ve gone out a few times; we hung out, talked shop.
We talk about where we’d like to end up.’’
Their summer in Baltimore has convinced them both that they want to end up writing sports for a newspaper or magazine.
Ard just finished her freshman year in Reno. A knee injury derailed her plans to play college basketball, but now she’s fully invested in sports journalism. “I like to tell people’s stories,’’ she said. “With sports it’s always something different, it’s always evolving.’’ She spent this summer writing for USportsHub.com and also doing some marketing work for Impact Basketball, a training facility in her hometown of Las Vegas.
Barshop spent her summer as a production intern at ESPN in Bristol, Conn. In her time at Marquette she first worked in radio and TV before making a web writing connection with ESPN Milwaukee. “This summer’s been totally different,’’ she said. “I didn’t think I’d like it, but I do. Cutting highlights is the same as writing a concise story. It’s been a great experience, but this summer I also realized I want to write.’’
