As a first-year student of Sports Journalism at USW, the first term of the course has taught me a wide variety of the aspects about sports journalism and the industry which is around it.
From being shown, taught and having to use the different skills which a sports journalist needs to be able to comment and report on sport, I have also really enjoyed being taught how to come up with ideas for, plan and create different types of journalistic work which I hadn’t learnt about previously. An example of this was the podcast project, which was group work, so I was able to learn from the tutors and from my course colleagues.
Learning about the technical styles such as the Harvard referencing style which USW uses and how to include it in my pieces of work, from blogs, essays and reports has been new and informative. Being challenged in order to try and use different journalistic publishing tools such as PowerPoint presentations, podcasts or word documents and which different types of Harvard referencing I should use when referencing a type of academic source and why, are among the new skills which I hadn’t learnt about prior to being on the course.
I have really enjoyed learning about important aspects which a sports journalist would need to think about when writing an article or publishing a story. Having to consider what the different type of media in the UK have as their target-audiences and the type of headlines which you may try and write to gain attention and inform readers is another new area for me. The same goes for learning law and ethics in journalism through the lectures at university.
Being shown how to locate, research, read through and select quotations from academic sources (such as academic theories, academic case-studies and industry commentary) and add them into my work has been really interesting and not something I had much experience in before starting the course.
The highlight for me has been the great mix of studying and learning how to write a match report for a sporting fixture and attending different sports fixtures to really use the new skills. Being shown how to write the structure and the layout of a report has been in more depth than I had previously learnt. New opportunities such as how to use radio-studio facilities, as well as how to plan, practice and then create a podcast have been enjoyable and challenging but fun too.
I have also really enjoyed learning more about areas such as the identity of nations, fan culture and the key reasons as to why a sport might mean so much to an individual or a group, I feel really interested in this area. I like to think about the supposed view of different sports in terms of their history, their fans and what type of experiences that the best moments in them can provide their fans with from the sports, leisure and social cultures lectures.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from university and my course when I started, and I feel I have loads to learn, but the way I am being taught and the way it is explained is good for me. I want to learn more and continue to learn new things and practice new and old skills.
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