Media Participation Project
When I heard about the media
participation project, I immediately knew what I wanted to do from the start.
Because I have wanted to be a sports journalist my entire life, I decided I
wanted to do something related to that specific topic, luckily I inquired about
WMUC Sports Radio. WMUC is a sports radio station located on south campus; they
specialize in on campus sporting events, providing a pregame report, in game
radio broadcast, and post game analysis of every Maryland sport home game. They
also run a broadcasting booth so students can actually have their own radio
shows talking about sports and bringing in surprise guests. I was inquiring to
be a post game journalist for the football team when I first heard about WMUC
through Beteck on ELMS. After going to WUMC’s first informational meeting back
in September, I talked to Marissa Morris, the head coordinator of sports
writers for WMUC. She told me that because I was a manager for the football
team already, I could cover post game football stories. However, instead of
writing recaps for games, or about different statistics for different players,
I chose to be with the reporters themselves and go to the press conferences held
for Head Coach Randy Edsall.
My first press conference came
during the week of the Maryland vs. Iowa game, a time where morale was low on
the team after they suffered a terrible loss to Ohio State the week before. The
scheduling of the press conferences would actually work out great with my own
personal schedule; the conference would be at 12:30 every Tuesday, and practice
would end at 10:30 AM. The conferences are held in the 5th floor of
the Tyser Tower Suite in Byrd Stadium. There I was greeted with the smell of
free Sbarro Pizza, accompanied by huge stacks of stat sheets for anyone looking
to read some interesting facts between Maryland and their opponent for the week.
Coach Edsall usually starts the conference a coupe minutes before 12:30 and he
sits in front of a microphone and, as you would expect, takes questions from
the press. However, before media are allowed to answer questions, Coach Edsall
starts with an opening statement regarding the opponent for the week, and then
the floodgates open and questions pour out all over the room.
To be honest, I never have asked
coach Edsall a question yet out of the 4 conferences I have been to, all I have
done is take notes on what he says to different questions. I am actually scared
to ask him a question just because I work for him every day and I think that
would just make things awkward between us. To be honest, it was just really
awesome to be part of something as cool as a press conference for my favorite
team and school. I had always seen those conferences on TV and listened to them
on the radio, but now I was finally able to be there in person to watch Coach
Edsall answer all the questions that were put before him. There is one thing,
however, that I’ve always noticed from the press conferences I have gone to,
Coach Edsall never goes to into depth when delivering responses to questions.
He keeps the media almost completely locked out of what goes on inside Gossett
Football Team House and limits his answers to as few words as possible. This
often does not give me much to write about, but I make due nonetheless thanks
to the provided stat sheets for the teams that week.
After I had gathered all the
information I had needed to write an article for the week, I began my article
that same Tuesday night as the press conference. My boss, Marissa Morriss
wanted the article in as early as possible from the date of the press
conference, so I would usually get it done by Wednesday night. My piece
consisted of mainly what was said at the press conference and was no more than
300 words. But what is cool about WMUC, is that they post your article not only
on their website, but also post it to Twitter and Facebook using your Twitter handle
and Facebook name so everyone can see your work on social media we all use.
This is just another example of how being involved in the media can help us
gain better ideas on things we care about, and allows us to bring a more
educated opinion for discussion when regarding certain topics like sports.
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