B/R Sportswriting Internship: Crash course in writing, managing time

For the Love of the Page is a series in which current and former Bleacher Report Sportswriting Interns explain why they write and what they’ve learned.

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A little more than nine months ago, I had written little about sports and had few clips.

Today, I write part-time on the Breaking News team for the third largest sports website in the country, while still on pace to graduate early from the University of Tennessee with a Journalism & Electronic Media degree.

Without the Sportswriting Internship program, my résumé would be rather bare, but fortunately, B/R accepted my application and jumpstarted my career.

Like most full-time students would be, I was scared off by the word “internship” at first. The amount of work seemed daunting, but I quickly learned how to properly manage my other commitments while also learning how to become an expert sportswriter.

After completing the three-month program, I was given the chance to work a trial run for Breaking News. Suddenly, the countless hours of my life spent watching SportsCenter and being the sports junkie of my high school started paying off—literally.

I learned how to voice my thoughts on sports and teams I was familiar with through the internship program, but putting my all into Breaking News brought me so much more. After completing my first few months with the hard-working, but always fun, Breaking News team, I could rattle off 10 quality articles per day about Olympic curling, WWE or even the Nathan’s Hot Dog contest (which almost always top 5,000 reads).

Even though I take three classes nearly every day, I’m still contributing about 20 hours per week on the Breaking News team and am learning how to cover national sports in front of a massive audience while also manning the post of assistant sports editor for my campus newspaper.

While I still have a long way to go to be a great sportswriter, the time and commitment I’ve put into B/R has brought me more success and skills as a 20-year-old junior in college than I ever could have imagined.

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Steven Cook is a B/R Featured Columnist. Follow him on Twitter @steventerrycook