Have you always dreamed of hitting a home run with that play-by-play or scoring some points from your audience with your detailed athlete profiles? You can learn how to do just that at The Varsity, the University of Toronto’s unofficial journalism school. All you have to do is attend one class and you’ll be scoring touchdowns with your editors in no time!
The Varsity’s sports writing workshop will be taking place at 8 p.m. this Wednesday, Sept. 22, at the team’s headquarters on the second floor of 21 Sussex Ave.
The Varsity’s Editor-in-Chief Luke Savage, Sports Editor Roberta Bell, Associate Sports Editor Elisabeth Laratta, and I will all have our game faces on — ready to listen, learn, and even pass some on our own tips. We will also be speaking about what the paper looks like this year as a weekly, the implications for the sports section and its content, and who to turn to for advice.
Special guests for the evening will include veteran sports journalist and opinions writer for Roger’s Sportsnet.ca, Perry Lefko, and recent Ryerson University School of Journalism graduate Erin Valois. Valois was the former Sports Editor at The Eyeopener, Ryerson’s independent student newspaper, and is currently a web producer at The National Post.
While Lefko will explain how to write a sports newspaper article and speak about important aspects of sports journalism, Valois will discuss her trials and tribulations as a student sports journalist and provide insight as to how she broke into the biz.
“You have to know how to tell the story beyond the statistics or the main plays of the game,” said Valois of finding a voice in the world of sports journalism.
“Sports writing is something that’s completely different from any other type of writing you’ll ever have to do. It involves a lot of feature writing and the same people who have to write the features are the same people writing game stories. It’s always different types of journalism and skills you’ll have to have in one job. It’s one of the hardest types of writing to get into.”
Versatility is very important in sports writing. It is because the sports journalism industry is just as competitive (if not more so) as the world of professional sports that The Varsity has decided to host this workshop to explore different techniques and styles of sports reporting with writers.
Get in the game!
Amanda-Marie Quintino
Director of Recruitment and Training
