My daughter is a sophomore in high school. She’s interested in pursuing sports journalism as a career. She writes regularly (blog etc.) and plays varsity basketball (no interest in getting recruited.)
I am trying to find opportunities for her to experience sports journalism in the real world (internship/clubs etc.) If anyone has pointers for things she might pursue I would be grateful to hear them.
Does her athletic conference have a website? Perhaps could guest report on her school teams?
We’ve seen college kids get jobs both at their community college or local four year colleges in audio visual tech roles/ support for recording games and maintaining websites.
Some work seasonal jobs at minor league baseball or youth recreation leagues, get involved in promotion, concessions, tickets, or community outreach.
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Is there a local paper (either online or physical)? They may hire HS students to write some articles.
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Does the high school cover their sports teams by streaming games or a newsletter?
Many of the larger public high schools here offer opportunities for kids to get involved in their sports reporting. My D attended a small private and students handled the broadcast live-stream of games and the student-run newsletter.
I’d start there and ask the advisors for other suggestions in your area. Minor league teams? Neighborhood newspapers? Etc.
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Are you in a metropolitan area?
Honestly, the best thing she can do is write in a wide variety of journalistic beats for her school newspaper, and then she can also look for internships. If the school has sports broadcast journalism, that’s also helpful (our HS has a student broadcasting club, and they call games, do interviews, etc.). But to prepare for a career in journalism, high school is too young to specialize. The key is to gain experience in writing, editing, and interviewing (and looking for stories), which can be done in a variety of contexts. If she’s on her HS newspaper, though, she can aim for the Sports Editor position.
Journalism internships with newspapers and other outlets are usually reserved for college students, but there might be opportunities here, too. You might also look for summer programs for high school students at colleges (like Media Now at Drake University), which might have classes in sports journalism.
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Yes, we are.
My S22 was briefly very interested in this subject during his time in HS. During the pandemic, he began writing sports columns and opinion pieces for some online websites he found by searching and applying for positions. He was even paid by a few!
Also, he approached a local big sports high school in our area (his school was very small and has a very small athletics program) and asked them if they might be looking for someone to broadcast live from their baseball games. The coach was really into it, so my S established an internet radio channel and spent a lot of time with the baseball team interviewing them, and broadcast live from all of the games, doing color commentary along with calling the action from the games. The parents LOVED it and he became an honorary member of the team.
He even used that experience as his senior project! He loves to talk (he’s an opera and classical voice major now) and write (also an English lit minor), and loves sports and statistics, so those activities were great for him.
He also did the NY Times summer pre college program for sports writing- he loved it and met some friends who he’s still in touch with.
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Former journalist here. In high school I worked on my school paper and did a summer internship at a very small local paper.
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Look for summer camps too. The University of Indiana had a great one that’s not too pricy. UNC, Syracuse, Clemson, etc have camps too but they get into the 1000s. Use the phrase “ summer scholar at the university of so and so “
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And network network network. My daughters had a classmate whose father was a camera man for Kronke sports, so while he didn’t need interns, he knew people who did, he’d let hs kids tag along (usually for set up rather than the game), etc. A friend of mine is married to ‘the Voice of the Rockies’ and he might know someone who knows someone.
At my daughter’s college they streamed the games. The same guy did all the games and while he knew a lot about baseball and basketball, he new NOTHING about lacrosse, especially women’s lacrosse. He’d call the games like basketball games (‘that’s a charge’ when it wasn’t). He learned a few things about men’s, but then would refer to ‘long stick defense’ (girls sticks are all the same length except the goalie). It was painful to listen to him. A couple of years into it, they finally figured out if they had a couple of players (usually guys for the girls’ games and vice versa) to help him, it was a lot better They weren’t paid, but they got to be on the stream and insert a little sanity into the coverage.
If she’s a good writer, one of the smaller papers might print a feature about a player or a coach. A specialty magazine or paper might do it too, like the Catholic paper might print an article about the CYL baseball summer program or the city rec center might want a few paragraphs on a pickleball league. It may only get posted on a bulletin board, but it’s good for a portfolio.
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