Katie Couric Didn't Major in Broadcast Journalism

During my youth (up until a year ago) I spent many a summers working six hour days in 20 minute rotations staring at a pool full of stay at home moms with too many children (aka I was a lifeguard at a private swim club). During that time I became good friends with an older lifeguard I will name "Susan" for legal reasons. Now, Susan was a bubbly college aged girl with an amazing figure that made you want to hate her except that she was too nice to actually hate. She also always wore these big black sunglasses, more so in the morning when it wasn't sunny and she was working the opening shift than any other time of the day. After years of witnessing this routine, I realized that Susan may have been hitting the bottle a little too hard Monday night, Tuesday night, and basically every single night of the week. Adding onto my suspicions is that you could always find her "sleeping" on a lounge chair until 10am when the pool opened and she miraculously perked up. Susan really was too good to be true.

But, Susan did have a problem. She could never seem to decide on what major to declare at her top tier school. The one thing she always fell back on was, "Well it doesn't really matter what I major in, I can always go into a different field. I mean look at Katie Couric, she majored in American Studies and is now one of the leading women in broadcast journalism."


Looking good Couric. Photo from Flickr.com

After hearing Susan say this hundreds of times I decided to do a bit of research myself and found out that in fact, Couric was an American Studies major that has now become the first woman ever to anchor a solo evening news show. This led me to think about myself and fellow friends who have decided to pursue Broadcast Journalism and, in some cases, Sports Journalism. Are we making the right decision by solely focusing our major on what we think we want to do with our lives or would it actually make us better, more well rounded journalists, to major in something other than Journalism?

Now, I am not saying you should run to your Academic Advisor and switch your major, I am merely saying that I believe there are other routes out there that could get you to your future job as a sports journalist. So, if you are thinking about majoring in Sports Journalism or planning on declaring a major soon, here are some other Majors and Minors to consider that will help you become a better journalist.

*Any Communications Major: The skills I have learned as an Organizational Political Communications minor I have no doubt will help me understand people better and become a better communicator and therefore a better journalist. If your school has classes such as Mass Media, Argument and Advocacy, Debate, Leadership, or Conflict and Negotiation, definitely take them. If you don't know how to communicate and work out your problems with people, you won't just fail in journalism, you'll probably also turn out to be a pretty miserable human being.

*Acting: You may dream of being behind the mic and not on stage, but a lot of the qualities found in a great broadcaster are essential in becoming a great actor. When I entered Emerson I had no broadcasting experience, but I landed on air spots my first semester because of the skills I acquired from acting in plays and musicals. As a journalist you have to know how to occasionally memorize your scripts, banter or "improv" when you have extra air time to fill, and how to look at ease in front of an audience. These are all skills you learn from being on stage.

*Voice: Majoring in Musical Theatre or Voice may be a bit extreme for an up and coming sportscaster, but taking some private lessons in singing is highly recommended. A big mistake a lot of people make in life really is that they don't know how to use their voice. Your voice is an instrument, if you misuse it you will hurt it, if you know how to use it well and do things like (speak from the diaphragm, project, etc etc) you will sound much better on air. And, if you're a little too shy for a vocal class, a Professional Voice and Speech class will do the trick. Knowing, how your voice works will help you understand why you speak the way you speak and will make you a better journalist. Plus, if you have issues like dentalization, nasality, or a really terrible accent, you might as well work on getting rid of it now.



If she can sing, than so can you. Photo from Flickr.com.

*Journalism: This option may be a given, but I'm not saying you have to major in Sports Journalism, what I'm saying is dabble in a little bit of everything. Take some print journalism classes, some broadcast journalism classes, some editing classes because these are all skills you are going to need to make it in the real world. People don't just get hired to "talk on the tv" anymore. You have to be well rounded. You must know how to write a good story, occasionally edit and put together your story if it is for radio or tv, and how to present it on air. And, you may find in these different kinds of classes, that the technical side of journalism is more your style or that you'd rather see your byline in the newspaper than on tv with your name in the lower third box on the screen.


The only better feeling than being on air is being in the control room. Photo from Flickr.com







and your last option is....

*Anything: While taking journalism classes are advised, don't beat yourself up if you don't get into that broadcast journalism program you wanted or if your school doesn't have a sports journalism degree. Most schools don't. In fact, sports journalism as a major has only been around for a handful of decades so most of the older men and women in sports journalism do not hold degrees in that major. And, if they are old and you're still hearing them on the radio or seeing them on tv, clearly they are doing something right. Take classes that interest you. Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, took courses in calligraphy because it was something that intrigued him. And, he later used calligraphy as one of the many fonts available to Microsoft Word users, an idea he pioneered. And where would we be today if we didn't have to option of expressing ourselves through Comic Sans, Times New Roman Bold, and the ever popular Lucida Handwriting?

So, if Katie Couric can major in American Studies, and Art Garfunkel and Lisa Kudrow can both major in Mathematics, then you, the next up and coming star in the world of sports journalism, can major in whatever you darn well feel like.