Month: December 2018

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/sports/mizzou_mens_basketball/tigers-tilmon-named-sec-player-of-the-week/article_d733b0dc-079d-11e9-b2d1-df4a4b10e6b7.html

Christmas Eve work came at a slow pace. For a majority of the morning, I was just helping Michael and Eric put together the presentation of the paper for Christmas. I also scheduled tweets, inserted hyperlinks and tweets into stories from the previous night, helped find wire stories as well as write headlines and proof pages.

Then, the SEC had announced its player of the week to be Mizzou’s Jeremiah Tilmon and I wrote up a quick brief on that. Now, it’s post-holiday and we’re back to work.

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/sports/prep_sports/forfeits-highlight-hickman-wrestling-victory-over-tolton/article_fad64752-04be-11e9-9412-ffef5648a658.html

Thursday night was pretty interesting. I got to cover a wrestling dual and it was an interesting dual at that.

24 hours prior to writing the story, I knew nothing about wrestling. I spent the whole day leading up to the dual learning about the sport because I wanted to get it right.

Then the meet came and a majority of the matches ended in forfeits. The tone of my story was to show the oddness of that because I was a fish out of water there. But it was a lot of fun because it was something out of my knowledge and comfort zone.

I think I gained some great experience doing that and I’m looking forward to doing more.

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/sports/prep_sports/rock-bridge-boys-and-girls-basketball-pick-up-victories/article_b85ea970-05a2-11e9-af8d-c350b857db65.html

Friday night, I got to cover some more high school basketball. I’ve taken a liking to Rock Bridge high school and its teams. It was a lot of fun to be there the entirety of Friday night to cover both girls and boys basketball.

Though it came with a lot of writing. The boys won in a 40-point blowout but they got more space in my article. They’re No. 3 in the state and they’re really talented and deserving of 700 words.

But, the girls game was a lot closer, more competitive and intense. I felt I did them a bit wrong by not giving them the same amount of space as the boys because it was a great game. However, there shouldn’t be 1000+ word stories on one night of high school basketball. They’re just regular gamers so, I had to realize that. It was also getting past 10PM when I finally finished writing last night so I had to make some editorial decisions myself on what to include and what not to include.

That was a great experience of having a full plate though. I’ve never felt more pressured by a deadline but it was a great learning experience and it was a lot of fun.