December 3 2008

My internship's winding down now.  Friday and next Tuesday are my last two times in the office.  Over the past two weeks I had my bass fishing article as well as an article on a national championship winning 11 and under AAU basketball team published.  I was pretty pleased with both of them and really enjoy writing these feature stories.  

The last game I'm covering will be Saturday, a high school basketball matchup between Newark and Tatnall.  It turns out there's some drama going on with Newark's head coach and my editor wants me to investigate the situation, which should be interesting. 

With the end of my internship coming up fast, I was offered to continue writing stories for the News Journal in the winter and spring.  I'll finally be getting paid which is obviously a good thing, but more importantly I'll have the opportunity to write more and compile more clips before I graduate.

November 14 2008

This past week I covered a football game between Wilmington Friends and Tower Hill. It was a pretty good game and my story was out in Sunday's paper. This upcoming Tuesday my Rugby story is coming out and I'm pretty excited about that. I feel I wrote a pretty good article. I also finally finished up my Bass Fishing story but I'm not sure when that's getting published. For this upcoming week I've been assigned to do a feature on a U-11 AAU local basketball team that just won the national championship in Las Vegas. I've got to call the coach at some point this week and set up an interview. It should be interesting to get good quotes out of a bunch of 11 year olds, but we'll see how that goes.

November 4 2008

Last Tuesday night I attended the Wilmington Rugby Club's last practice. It felt like it was around 20 degrees and I was out there for about two hours. I ended up interviewing the head coach, the captain and a few of the players. On Saturday I went to their last game against Lancaster. Heading into it the team was undefeated which was an angle I had on my story, but unfortunately they pulled a New England Patriots and lost.
Regardless, I submitted my story yesterday.

For my other story, the bass fishing one, I've had a slightly more difficult time tracking down my sources. I'm still trying to get in contact with one more angler on the team and then my story should be good to go.

October 21 Post

This week I had my very first sports column published. Seeing how the Philadelphia Phillies are headed to the World Series, I decided to write about their unheralded star Shane Victorino and how this post season has been his breakout party. Seeing my actual thoughts appear in the Sunday sports section definitely was one of the coolest things I've yet to experience as an aspiring journalist.

Besides that, I wrote a couple stories about two local high school athletes who have committed to playing college sports. One of them was a boy headed to Delaware to play lacrosse and the other a girl who is going to Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania. Both of those stories were pretty short, but easy clips to write.

Right now I'm still working on my Bass Fishing feature story. I finally got ahold of the captain who called me today so it should be written before the weeks over. Another story I'm doing which isn't due until November is on the Wilmington Rugby Club.

This week I had my first feature article published (on Monday) and am currently working on another one. This time it's Delaware's Bass Fishing team and I'm having a harder time getting in touch with my sources. I've left two messages for the captain in the last few days and he's yet to return my call so I've e-mailed my initial contact asking for some numbers of a few more team members. My next article is on the Wilmington Club Rugby team which I should be starting soon, especially if the bass fishing article doesn't come through.

Besides those two things I was at the office taking box scores on Friday and Tuesday night, same as every week.

October 7th

The past week I spent writing a story on a remarkable eight year old named Eliza Brooks. Although it's impossible to verify it as fact, Eliza could be the fastest girl her age in the entire country. I interviewed her coach, her parents, and Eliza herself for the story which should be getting published next Monday. It's my first feature for the News Journal so I wasn't positive as to what they were looking for or if they'll like it, but I feel I did a pretty good job. I tend to needlessly worry about things.

I have another feature due in a little over a week that I need to start chipping away at over the next couple days. I'm not sure if I'll be covering a football game this Saturday because of the feature workload but we'll see.

September 30th 2008

I'm currently on the third week of my internship at the Wilmington News Journal's sports desk.

What I do for the most part is come in every Tuesday and Friday night and record box scores from high school football, soccer, field hockey, and girls volleyball games from all around Delaware. My first two weeks that's all I did, but since then I've covered a high school soccer game and a high school football game. Both were done on a Saturday afternoon and both appeared in the Sunday edition the following day, which is pretty cool.

Right now I'm settling in on coming to work Tuesday and Friday nights while also taking on a few feature stories. I have one due Friday about an 8 year old girl in Delaware who won the Junior Olympics over the summer and is one of the fastest girls in her age group in the country.

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