Success story: Corporate job vs. sportswriting? Easy choice

When I joined the Bleacher Report Sportswriting Internship in Spring of 2011, I never imagined that it would change the course of my life. As a business major with a passion for sports, I was fairly certain I was going to end up in the corporate world, far away from sports. I applied for the internship looking to experience something unique. Being a sportswriter is a dream job, but I didn’t know how feasible it was to become one and had heard horror stories about how journalism was becoming a lost art.

Bleacher Report gave me a platform to express my thoughts and opinions with thousands of people, rather than just a few friends at once. The internship gave me the tools to sound less like a raving lunatic writing a research paper and more like a raving lunatic writing an online sports article.

When I joined the internship, I was passionate about sports but didn’t really have an understanding as to how to write in an online setting. I’d been taught to write a report on blue whales but never about how awful Mike Singletary was, Stephen Curry’s inexcusably inadequate defense or Matt Barkley’s potential.
The internship helped me develop an understanding of what a lead is and how to create compelling content, craft a headline that resonates with readers and include media that supports what is being said in the article.

I learned something every day I was taking part in the internship and saw every article as an opportunity to improve, try something new, express myself and ultimately find my voice as a writer. It’s easy to fall in love with the process and want to do nothing but write all day long. During the internship, I completed three times as many articles as the editors assigned in some weeks. I was hooked on writing and amazed by the number of people who were reading and commenting on original content I had created.

Fortunately at Bleacher Report, hard work pays dividends. The internship helped me get my foot in the door with the Trends and Traffic (breaking news) team, where I am currently an Assignment Editor. With TNT, I’ve written about just about every sport you can think of and further developed what I had learned in the internship.

Now, I’m one of the people who look for interns who may be a fit for TNT.

The Internship has always been a gold mine for prospective TNT writers, as they are accustomed to writing for Bleacher Report, have an understanding of what a lead should look like and know which headlines will draw in readers, among other things.  A huge portion of our team is made up of former interns, and while talented writers exist everywhere, there is a far higher concentration of eager and gifted writers who are great fits for our team in the Internship.

I work with a great group of people at a website unlike any other, and get to say that I do this for a living. This year has been a whirlwind for me and I am thankful each and every day that I decided to start with the internship.

* * *

Check out Kyle Vassalo’s B/R Profile and follow him on Twitter @ASU52