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.