B/R Sportswriting Internship: Not just a resume builder

I’m one of those people who came into college completely clueless on what to major in and what career to pursue. I tried everything, bouncing from major to major, and even though my GPA was decent, I gave some serious thought to dropping out of school until I realized what field I wanted to pursue.

Finally, as a second-semester junior, I decided to give journalism a shot. I’ve always been a relatively good writer, so news writing came pretty easily.

I’m now a senior at East Carolina, and I must say, the Bleacher Report Sportswriting Internship has been a catalyst to my level of excitement in the field of journalism. The internship has given me the opportunity to write about the sports I love, and now I’m extremely engaged and passionate about everything I do in my major at ECU.

Beyond sparking my enthusiasm for sports, the program has vastly improved my writing.

I print out every one of the article reviews I receive from my Feedback Editor, former intern Adam Fromal, and read them over before I start writing every morning. Between the reviews and writing for B/R almost every day, I can’t help noticing the transformation of my writing. I also try to read as many articles by other B/R interns as possible and have noticed a similar improvement in my peers.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I was skeptical about this internship when I first came across it. I was afraid writing subjectively would interfere with the objective news writing they teach us in journalism school.

But the internship gave me a vehicle to be subjective, a necessity for improving one’s writing. It taught me to think more outside the box, rather than just follow the upside-down pyramid approach that’s so repetitive.

The B/R internship gives us the opportunity to have our writing published on a national stage, and I believe that’s why our writing has improved 10-fold. We have to be careful to attribute correctly, get the facts straight and write well to improve not only our writing, but our reputations.

I know most of my peers were interested in this internship because it was something to put on a résumé. I felt the same way. But this internship is more important than just a résumé booster. It provides writers the opportunity to greatly enhance their portfolio.

When you apply for a job in this field, employers may glance over your transcript. They might even take a second to read your résumé. But what they really want to see is what you’ve actually done, the quality of your work. That’s how they will choose the best candidate for the job.

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David Cucchiara is an MLB Featured Columnist and an intern in B/R’s Fall class. Follow him on Twitter @cucch22.