Job Shadows: What You Saw, Part 1

Here's a sampling of some of the various job shadows done by you all (this will be updated as job shadow reports are turned in, so please check back frequently). Take a look and see what you can learn from everyone's visits. There's a lot of good stuff here to help you decide what you want to do with your lives; what you need to be doing to get there; and what to expect when you do get there.

Please give each one of these a quick read as they come in, will you?

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A day in the shadow of Brian Calloway was a day where I did not feel like a shadow. I felt like I was working alongside him. I observed and shadowed of course, but I learned from him. Not only did I learn from example, but I learned through him teaching me.

Brian Calloway is the Lead Prep Sports Reporter for the Lansing State Journal. He covers all high school sports in the area and also covers Michigan State women’s basketball. He previously covered Michigan State football and men’s basketball in beats as well.

I arrived at Holt High School at 6:00 p.m. with a notebook and pencil in my hand ready to go. Brian waited for me outside of the gates so we could get into the stadium with media credentials. Holt High School had their homecoming football game vs. East Lansing High School. The game didn’t start until 7:00 p.m., but Brian arrives to each event an hour before it starts so he can get things set up and situated. As we walked through the gates he immediately asked for rosters from both teams and proceeded to walk up to the press box.

He set up his computer with open tabs of twitter, Microsoft Word and previous stats he had from both teams. When covering high school sports, stats are not provided so Brian had to keep his own. Not only did he come up with his own statistics but would jot down the play-by-play, the time that each drive starts, and would quickly memorize numbers of all players. He said the act of multitasking has become second nature to him. 

He came into the game explaining to me that both teams were 2-2 and that either team had a good chance of winning. Brian likes to come up with a prediction for himself of who wins each game before it starts. He also talked about the big players that he predicted he would interview after the game (for example: Kentre Patterson is committed to Illinois State) and Brian wanted to keep an eye out for him.

Brian’s deadline is 10:30 p.m. the night of a game. He began to write his story at halftime. He started out by writing out the big plays in pyramid order and would later fill in more information as it came to him.

I met one of the photographers from the Lansing State Journal as well. A different photographer can be assigned to each game. The photographer that shot this game was Matthew Dae. He told me that he has been a photographer for eight years and that he knew nothing about sports. The photographer’s deadline is 9:30 p.m. Matthew dropped the photos that he took from the first half into a folder for someone in the Lansing State Journal to choose from to put in Brian’s story.

Since Brian’s deadline is so early, he writes his story throughout halftime and the second half of the game and he will post it before the deadline. Later, when he gets quotes from players and coaches he goes back and edits the story.

Along with keeping stats and keeping tabs on players, Brian would also live tweet throughout the game. He tweeted a picture of kick off at the beginning. He would tweet each time there was a big play or new score update. At the end of each quarter he would tweet a score along with what was going on in the game at that time. Each time a team would get into the red zone he would begin recording to see if he could tweet a video of a touchdown. At the end of each tweet he would tag the Lansing State Journal sports twitter page so his followers would know that that was the paper covering the game.

At the end of the game, we ran. Literally ran. We had to make it to the field to interview players and coaches. Maneuvering through people was quite the struggle, but I felt like a journalist. Brian used two phones to interview the head coach of the winning team, and the star player from the winning team. On one phone he recorded audio, the other phone he recorded video. Each interview lasted around three minutes per person and he asked relevant questions about the game. He never wrote the questions down beforehand. It seemed so natural as he asked the contestants. Brian said when he has time he tries to speak to the losing team but tonight he did not.

This job would fit me because of my love for sports, but mostly, football. I like keeping tabs on different athletes and learning more about them. Brian said he loves to write feature stories on the athletes. That is something I would love to do as well. Everything is so fast paced and multitasking is mandatory when it comes to this job. I think this job would be suited for me in those aspects. What I did not like about this job was that Brian found out the teams he was covering a few days before the game. It would be much more personal and interesting to me if I could cover just one team and all things related to that team, instead of all high school teams in the area. I learned a lot from him and I hope I can learn even more from Brian in the future.