By Delme Parfitt, Course Leader, BA Sports Journalism
IT’S almost 14 years since the late BBC Wales sports correspondent Bob Humphreys had his memoirs published under the banner ‘Not a Proper Journalist’.
By the time Bob’s tome hit shop shelves he was no longer with us, having been taken tragically by cancer at the age of 56 in August 2008.
The title was a nod to Bob’s humility and self-deprecation and was coined around 40 years after American broadcaster Howard Cosell first declared that sports was the “toy department of human life”.
Were Bob and Howard still with us today, what odds an acknowledgement that both phrases are long past their sell-by date? Short ones, no question.
Sports journalism has never been as important, never mattered more. In fact, when Cosell reckoned sport to be “a microcosm of human life”, he could not have known how ahead of its time his observation would prove to be.
As we journey through the third decade of the 21st century, sports journalism as a vehicle for scrutiny, investigation and the setting of news agendas on front and back pages is as powerful, if not more so, as any other specialism in the media environment – and across multiple delivery platforms from podcasts to ink on dead trees. Can we call it a golden age for sports journalism? I think so.
Good. Actually, great, because that means what lies ahead of the BA Sports Journalism degree at the University of South Wales, should remain as exciting, as relevant, as dynamic, as worthwhile as it has been in the five years since the first students walked through the doors of it’s futuristic atrium HQ in central Cardiff back in September 2017.
When former South Wales Evening Post, BBC Wales and ITV journalist Julie Kissick first created the course, she did it with the aim of producing industry-ready graduates not just with the requisite skillset, but also the personal characteristics needed to win the respect of peers in an, at times, ferociously demanding profession.
Confidence, assertiveness and the willingness to put a foot in a door are staples, but there’s also politeness, punctuality, reliability, flexibility. All are qualities at the core of our course, bound up in student-lecturer communication and developed not just in classrooms and studios but externally at press conferences, matches, on work placements and through engagement on social media.
Our exposport.co.uk website turns our students into publishers the moment they are entrusted with match coverage during one of our weekly live reporting days at the USW Sport Park, Treforest. The buzz of that first by-line or piece to camera, the adrenaline rush of trumpeting it with a link or a clip on twitter….it’s priceless to watch the glow off students experiencing this process, and to see them grow in stature as it gradually becomes the norm.
In a sports journalism arena that continues to change at breakneck speed, the evolution of teaching in higher education must be constant.
While platforms such as TikTok and twitter spaces weave their way through the daily routines of practical business, while podcasting, promotion, marketing, writing and broadcasting compete for students’ attention, core fundamentals like news value, story gathering, contact building and law and ethics remain at the heart of everything we do.
That’s why we’re confident enough to regularly put students in the press box at Cardiff City and Swansea City home games, Wales Women’s internationals and occasions like the Welsh Open snooker, after just six months of being part of our family. And it’s also why we’re about to do the same when Wayne Pivac’s Wales team play their November Test matches and Six Nations encounters at the Principality Stadium.
That’s why the Football Association of Wales just invited our students to their National Coaching Conference, and to be involved in media training processes for the next generation of elite professional football coaches.
That’s why we’ve got graduates in full-time jobs in media departments at the FAW and various EFL clubs, others flourishing as sports journalists and videographers with some of the largest regional publishers in the UK such as Reach and Newsquest, and yet more being paid to produce online content for a range of media outlets.
That’s why even some of our current students are already in the workplace and building their profile in the world of sports journalism by taking on both paid and voluntary roles at, among others, Cardiff City and Swansea City football clubs, the Prost International website and other respected online publications such as backpagefootball.com, footballleagueworld.co.uk and intuboxing.com
That’s why we constantly receive approaches from Cymru Premier and Cymru South football clubs asking our students for help and guidance on media business, and why organisations such as Commonwealth Games Wales, Hockey Wales, The Hundred cricket franchise and the Welsh Rugby Union come to us when opportunities to work and collaborate with them arise.
That’s why our students have created, and made buoyant, websites such as the renowned and award-winning Y Clwb Pel Droed, and the Welsh Premiership Podcast, tapping into areas of Welsh sport that are largely sidelined by mainstream media – meaning enthusiasts now look to us for coverage.
🎬 Take One!@DjGiggsy 🤣 pic.twitter.com/0BKP0t4kc5
— SportsJournoUSW (@SportsJournoUSW) March 7, 2022
That’s why the best sports journalists in Wales and beyond at BBC Wales, WalesOnline and elsewhere are willing to work with us to help prepare our students to be the best they can be, whether through guest speaking, the providing of insight and expertise when assessments come around, being interviewed for a podcast or facilitating invaluable work experience.
That’s why, when our first and second year students launched the Join Our Journey campaign in January 2022 to promote and showcase the course, there was no shortage of material to work with.
That’s why we’re proud of how far we’ve come as our fifth anniversary approaches.
Yet there’s so much still to do, so many opportunities to grasp, so many ways the BA Sports Journalism course at USW can grow and flourish.
So many people seem to regard sports journalism as a dream job. With us, it becomes a reality.
* For more information about the BA Sports journalism course at USW, visit the website.