Like most interns, David Ubben probably figured that his summer sports writing internship at The Oklahoman would serve as some sort of audition for a
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| Juan Lopez |
full-time position.
However, it’s unlikely that he thought his internship would prove to be an audition for one of The Oklahoman’s most prestigious beats: the University of Oklahoma.
Ubben, who graduated from the University of Missouri in the spring, didn’t have to wait long for his first full-time job offer, or first major job offer for that matter. He completed his internship July 31 and was offered the vacant OU beat writer job the following Tuesday.
The job had become available after one college writer asked be to reassigned to the prep beat and another opted to move to San Francisco for graduate school. On the advice of a few mentors, Ubben pitched his case to sports editor Mike Sherman, who offered Ubben the job after
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| Nate Taylor |
considering the strong body of work and initiative displayed by the intern during the summer.
"I tried to think of any reasons why I wouldn’t take the job," said Ubben, who will cover OU’s football and basketball programs. "I couldn’t come up with any.
"I never imagined starting my career at this level."
Ubben represents the first member of the Sports Journalism Institute Class of 2009 to gain full-time employment as the summer internship season comes to an end. Meanwhile, the other eight members planted seeds of their own.
Of the eight, Andrew Johnson (Fayettevillle, N.C., Observer) and Anica Wong (Denver Post) are recent graduates of Morehouse College and Stanford
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| David Ubben |
University, respectively. Anna Kim (Buffalo News), Juan Lopez (Colorado Springs Gazette), Jordan Mason (ESPN), Nate Taylor (Minneapolis Star Tribune), Larry Young (Houston Chronicle) and myself (Salt Lake Tribune) will return to their respective colleges for the fall semester.
Members of the 2009 class were flown to St. Petersburg, Fla., where they spent nine days studying at the Poynter Institute under SJI founders Sandy Rosenbush and Leon Carter. During the training program, which is tantamount to a sports journalism "boot camp," the interns-to-be attended several lectures from guest speakers, received daily sports quizzes, covered live sporting events, made contacts with professional sports journalists and blogged about their experiences.
And then each was shipped off to their respective newspapers, where the real work began. Some of their assignments and methods used to obtain them ranged from typical to unconventional for sports writers.
Ubben churned out trend stories, features and enterprisers on a weekly basis. Kim covered golf, interviewed Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly and shot video.
Johnson met Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and tracked an indoor football team. Young wrote stories on everything from college football to the NBA draft. Mason helped put together highlight packages for ESPN and worked all sorts of crazy hours.
Lopez spent his first week walking/running to his assignments and back to the office before acquiring a car. Wong wrote stories and shot video, all while maintaining a healthy Twitter account. Taylor tried to figure out the puzzle that is the Minnesota Timberwolves and put the solution in print.
And me? I began by paddle surfing in the Great Salt Lake and I survived to write about it.
"My internship met and exceeded my expectations," said Kim, who attends the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill along with Mason. "I was given all the opportunities and more than I could have ever asked for."
For some, the internship provided opportunities to gain an even greater appreciation for certain other individuals. That’s what Lopez received when he was assigned to write a story on the International Blind Sports Federation.
Lopez said that watching the athletes participate in a sport called goalball – three players from each team take turns launching a heavy plastic ball that contains bells on the inside toward a goal – touched something inside him.
"Watching how quick they reacted to the sound of the ball rolling, how fluid they moved, how much they trusted their other senses – it was inspiring," said Lopez, who attends the University of Nevada-Reno.
"After my assignment, I actually went back just to watch some of the track and field competition. I know they’re blind for a majority of their lives so they are used to it, but I couldn’t imagine functioning without my sight. In a feeble attempt to spend a minute in their world, I walked down an empty hallway outside of the gyms they were playing in with my eyes closed. I had never been so scared and clueless in my life.
"I have major respect for those guys."
The biggest challenge cited by nearly every intern: deadlines. Fortunately, the rigorous training program at SJI, where there were deadlines for every assignment, helped to alleviate this obstacle and several others.
"SJI was great, and combined with my experience at Missouri, I feel really prepared to start this job," said Ubben, who also credited Greg Bowers, the sports editor at his college newspaper, the Columbia Missourian. "SJI really helped me hone my deadline-writing skills, always my least-favorite part of the job. Additionally, I can’t thank Leon, Sandy and Greg [Lee] enough for giving me advice on how I could make my case to showcase my skills and prove why I’m a strong candidate."
For others, the emphasis placed on multimedia made for a heavy workload and presented unique situations. Mason, Young, Taylor, Kim and Wong worked extensively with multimedia and gained a greater appreciation for its effectiveness in sports coverage.
"This summer, I did four videos to go with my stories online and I even was asked to be a guest on the local radio show," said Taylor, a senior at the University of Central Missouri. "In one story I did about a cyclists who didn’t want to race professionally, I took the pictures with my camera, shot video with a flip camera and wrote the story. That was just one of the great experiences I have had in adding multimedia to my tool set."
Added Young, a senior at Southern University: "The internship met my expectations because it allowed me to dabble in a little bit of it all. While in Houston, I shot my first video, did my first stand-up commentary and worked online shifts overnight."
Given the nation’s shaky job market and the increasing number of newspapers downsizing and shutting down, morale isn’t too high among journalists still in the business.
However, members of the SJI Class of 2009 seem to have an increased sense of hope that they can survive in a struggling business.
"I was treated with such respect and with such confidence that I believe this internship has given me more than just clips and relationships," Kim said. "I truly believe it has instilled my own confidence to keep moving forward."
