With the Super Bowl being hosted in Glendale in 2015, the Walter Cronkite School will offer a class for aspiring sports journalists to experience covering the news and events that precede the game itself.
The class, which will be taught by Cronkite School associate faculty Greg Boeck and Brett Kurland, will accommodate up to 20 students and will take place only in the fall 2014 semester.
Students interested in the class will undergo an application process, including submitting work samples, before they are selected for the fall, according to Cronkite Assistant Dean Mark Lodato.
Boeck, a sports writer for 37 years, said the hands-on experience students would gain from the class would set them apart from competitors when it came to applying for jobs.
“I’ve been with the school for six years now and sports journalism for most of them, and I can say 90 percent of the students who go through these programs get jobs,” Boeck said. “It’s a great resume maker, and you can get a job this way.”
Students enrolled in the class will cover various news topics tied to the Super Bowl, such as tourism and community news, along with more traditional pre-game sports coverage, Lodato said.
He added that there are currently no plans for the class to report live from the Super Bowl, but the curriculum is still being developed, and they are working to expand the opportunities for the students, such as a media day.
While most reporters dream of covering the game itself, Kurland said the class’ coverage of the months leading up to the Super Bowl would cover a wide variety of news.
“There’s so much that goes into the Super Bowl besides two football teams playing a game on the first Sunday in February,” he said.
The class will be modeled after Cronkite’s popular spring training class where students go onto the field, report the news and produce multimedia packages. However, the Super Bowl class will also partner with various news organizations including Fox Sports, The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com to produce content for the months leading up to the Super Bowl, Lodato said.
“This really fits in with our vision to give our students an unparalleled experience in covering professional- and college-level teams,” Lodato said.
The Super Bowl coverage class joins Cronkite’s expanding sports journalism program, which includes the 2012 Summer Olympics coverage and the launch of the Cronkite Sports bureau in Santa Monica, Calif.
“Our goal every semester is to look for ways to improve our curriculum,” Lodato said.
Besides faculty who are excited for the launch of the class and expansion of Cronkite’s sports journalism programs, students have also been anticipating the opportunity to be involved in Super Bowl coverage as well.
Journalism junior Josh Frons said he hopes to join the Super Bowl class, as he believes it would provide invaluable knowledge and a memorable experience.
“I think it would be a great opportunity to cover a major event in sports and have access to everything the Super Bowl would allow us to get,” Frons said. “It would be a great opportunity to have that real world experience.”
Contact the reporter at pkunthar@asu.edu
