Sports vs. News writing

My latest newspaper job, working part-time at the St. Cloud Times, has given me the opportunity to write articles for both the news page and the sports page. It's usually the assignments nobody else wants (like high school swimming for the sports page and finding a local angle on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the news page), but these days if you want to make some money writing, you kind of need to take what you can get.

Anyway, this dual role has brought up an interesting question for me: should I keep trying to find a sportswriting job after I'm done with AmeriCorps, or move over to the news page permanently? Of course, this all depends on the newspaper industry getting its act together and figuring out how to survive in the Internet age, which is not a given. But I've decided that I still want to chase that dream of writing for a living — at least for a few more years — no matter how hair-tuggingly frustrating it can be.

So, the question is, sports or news. Each has it's own appeal.

Sports
1. I am intrinsically drawn to it — Simply put, I just love the heck out of sports. Not really sure why, but I just do. This time of year I really miss my old gig at The Olathe News. The high school football playoffs are in full swing and the college basketball season has just started at MidAmerica Nazarene University. Those were the kind of days when I couldn't wait to go to "work."

2. It's not hard to find story ideas — There is always material and it's always easy to find. There are athletic directors, sports information directors and plenty of average Joe mom and dads in the stands eager to tell you what's going on in the local sports scene.

3. You get to sleep in — Sporting events don't start 'til at least 3:30 p.m. That means you can comfortably sleep until 10 every morning. And, at the risk of exposing the lazy nature I'm constantly fighting, there's nothing I like more than sleep.

4. I have experience — I've written a few hundred sports articles over the past five years. There's rarely a sports assignment that I don't feel entirely confident about executing.

5. People admire you — Tell any guy you're a sportswriter and there's about an 80 percent chance he'll say "Whoa, that sounds awesome," even after you explain that you cover preps and small college and not the pros. Most women are, at the very least, neutral about it. Tell people you're a news reporter and a lot of them think of either the paparazzi or that guy on TV who is interviewing a mother whose son was shot to death and asks, "So, how do you feel right now?"

News
1. It's usually more meaningful – As much as I love sports, I recognize that they're generally pretty insignificant and I often wonder if devoting my life to writing about games would ultimately be fulfilling. Sure, news writing can also be plenty trite, but the issues on the news page are generally more life-altering. If you can craft a story about that son who was shot to death that humanizes what could be seen as just another homicide statistic, that's meaningful.

2. It's not as competitive — It's hard to get sportswriting jobs cause a whole lot of people want them. When I applied for a sports job at the Ames Tribune this summer they said they had 150 applicants in the first 10 days they advertised the position. And that's a mid-level newspaper. It's simply easier to get work on the news side.

3. You work more regular hours — It can be a drag to sit in the newsroom writing up a high school football game every Friday night while your friends are out on the town. That's when you miss the more regular hours of the news desk. Also, if at some point I have a wife and children that I want to see once in a while, this would become an even bigger priority.

4. There's more variety – There's variety in sports, but only to a point. I'd say that about 95 percent of the articles I wrote in Olathe fell into three categories: game stories, player profiles and opinion columns. Even if every game and every player is slightly different, it does get repetitive after awhile. On the other hand, even if you're pigeon-holed in a very narrow beat on the news side, there's usually more ways you can dig into it.

5. You reach more people — Some people don't care about sports, period. But a well-crafted, interesting news story about a significant event (like say 9/11, or even something more local like the gas explosion in downtown St. Cloud 10 years ago) should draw in just about everybody in your area who knows how to read.

So there it is, pros and cons for both sides. Of course, it begs the question, why not look for a full-time position that is some sports, and some news? Those are pretty tough to find except at very small papers that barely pay enough to eke out a living. I'm probably better off focusing on one or the other. That is, if newspapers still exist after my AmeriCorps year is over, of course.