Pam worked as a Sports TV producer for over a decade at the local and national level and has recently added freelance sports writing to her resume. Sports has always been a great conversation starter and got her through many bad dates. She graduated from the esteemed journalism school at Indiana University, but it’s her internships that really helped her land her first job.
SportsTVJobs.com: You graduated from the fantastic journalism school at Indiana University, but you’ve often told me that one of the most important parts of your education were your internships, explain.
Pam: My internships are where I got that hands-on experience, I learned how to edit, how to call and set up interviews; I learned how to interview athletes out in the field, I got into the control room and learned how to produce shows. These are the type of things you can read about in school but until you do it and do it at a real station the difference is amazing.
I also learned at my internship that I wanted to be a producer. I never really had on air aspirations, when I saw the producer working every day, I was really compelled by the planning and the organization that went into that and it was kind of then that I realized that was a track for me. That’s the thing that is so great about internships, you get to do a little bit of everything so it kind of fine tunes your dreams. If you don’t want to be on-air you get exposed to all the other things that are out there for you – an editor, a producer, a shooter. Those are experiences that you might not learn in college, it really is imperative that you get internships.
A lot of the times it is not paid so it can be a sacrifice, but for me it lead to my first job. When I interned in Atlanta one summer I worked with an Sportscaster who ultimately referred me for my first job. If you do well and work hard at an internship it can definitely lead to employment later.