Realities of Sports Journalism

Many young aspiring sports journalists see ESPN or their local news network's sports broadcasters and want to do the same thing. But the sports journalism field is as big as it has ever been because of bloggers of sheer desire for information among sports fans around the country.

In this way, one of the many growing fields is high school sports recruiting. Football recruiting has especially grown in popularity over the last ten years. A recent article from the Hartford Courant credits the growth of sports recruiting knowledge with the accessibility of the internet and its resources. People are more interested in sports recruiting because it is more available.

Clark Foy, a journalism senior at OU is one of the sports recruiting writers for SoonerScoop.com, a recruiting website for oklahoma basketball and football. He thinks that writing for Sooner Scoop is no different than other types of journalism. He has to make visits and calls and is always ready for someone to call him with quotes for a story.

Rivals.com, the sports affiliate with SoonerScoop.com is under the Yahoo umbrella. They bought Rivals in 2007 for about 100 million dollars. This is important to note because not only does this show sports recruiting's strength in this era, but that there is some value in this form of journalism. Three years ago, there were about 185000 subscribers and the number has steadily grown since.

Moving forward, although many want to claim sports journalism as a tough field to get in, there is money in it, and there is still a need for better coverage for many different outlets.

Audio Test

Lincoln Ferguson, broadcast journalism sophomore, talks about the weather.

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RENT

For the past two weeks OU's School of Musical Theatre has performed one of the most popular modern musicals, Rent. It takes place in New York City towards the end of the millennium. The musical follows some members that are struggling to make money and subsequently pay Rent, but the issues are much deeper. OU took this musical to the next level with an incredible set, breathtaking voices, and surprising portrayals of the characters.

The performance was incredibly remarkable because of the intense moments of kissing and dancing. One of those moments came early in the musical when Angel Shunard, a transvestite street drummer, jumped, spun and slid on six inch high heels. There were many moments when the characters had long lip-locking sessions. Most of the time were with members of the same sex.

Some noticeably felt uncomfortable throughout those kissing scenes. Sarah Warner, piano pedagogy graduate student felt that way. She said that some parts of the musical were a little much for her taste. She added that her friend whom she went to the musical with say Rent on Broadway and said that even some of the actors there did not take some of the scenes that far.

However, artists should not take that as a slight at all. They made the musical memorable and the performance was spectacular. The singing was spectacular on all fronts. Seasons of Love, Rent's most popular song was perfection on Saturday night and most would be hard pressed to find a version of that song better performed than the one the audience took in that night.

The next week OU's School of Musical Theatre will be shutting down the Rent performances and moving ahead to the world premiere of The Adventures of Pinocchio. It should be great.

Next week, feedback from the cast will be coming and hopefully from more of the musical theatre staff.