By Will Stadler
Most people associate watching sports to lazy Saturday afternoons. There is usually a recliner involved, some type of chip present, and a cold beverage topping off the entire experience. However, there is actually an entire industry built upon watching sports, and there is no such laziness present.
Jonas Pope IV, who is currently working in the marketing and communications department at William Peace University, has covered sports for decades.
Pope Graduated from Elizabeth City State in 2002, where he was a radio broadcaster for the basketball and football programs. He started his writing and sports editing career at the Daily Herald in Roanoke Rapids, and went on to write for Tar Heel Illustrated, Durham Herald Sun, and the News and Observer. He also spent time as the beat writer for NC Central and NC State athletics.
He sat down with the Peace Times to discuss how covering sports can be a taxing job, while also offering an exciting occupation to one who really enjoys watching sports. His responses have been edited for length.
Q) Most people believe that working in sports is all fun and games, what is the hardest part about covering sports professionally?
A) I’ll start with the hours, because you don’t get to turn it off if you want to be competitive, and I’m a competitor. I want to be able to break a story. If you want to write as much as everybody else, you can’t turn it off. Also, you can’t predict the future. So like, if it’s Thursday night and I’m out with my family and a coach gets fired, I have to be ready to report that. There was a point where I would carry my laptop everywhere because you never know, the hours are just insane.
Q) What was the average turnaround like for your stories?
A) If I was covering a game and was doing a game story, we call those buzzer stories. The reason why I call them buzzer stories is as soon as the buzzer sounds and the game is over, you have to hit send. That’s how fast you have to publish, which means you’re writing the story as the game is happening. So I don’t know if a lot of people know that, unlike most people, you can’t watch a game and then go home, think about it on your ride home, and then write the story. Once the game is over, you’ve got two or three minutes to add the final score and then send it. However, if I were doing a deeper dive feature on somebody, I have to do a little bit more reporting and it would take a couple of days.
Q) You’ve covered both high school and college sports, is there any difference between covering those areas?
A) You have a little bit more time to do game stories for high school. In high school, you are doing your stats so you might have to track down a parent or staff member that was keeping the stats. Another difference is the ability to write on the spot. Some high school press areas don’t have wifi so a Sheetz or McDonald’s becomes your office to write in. The biggest difference is when I go to a college game, everything’s laid out for me. If I go to a college basketball game, my seat is labeled with the guide and materials right there after the game. Also, there will be a scheduled press conference after the game. Don’t get that in high school. In high school you are responsible for much more, you are doing your interviews and having to track down materials and that sort of thing.
Q) Did you have a favorite team that you covered, either high school or college?
A) I enjoyed covering NC State. Their 2021 team was one of my favorites. I had been covering that team for a couple of years and I’ve built some relationships, and a few of those guys I had known since they were in high school. I just had a lot of good relationships with those guys on that team, so that was fun. In terms of my favorite high school team, I’ve covered a lot of high schools, so I didn’t lock in on one team. I will say that I still really liked covering high school because it’s the purest form of athletics. They’re not getting paid. You know, it’s still playing for fun, still playing for the love of it. That’s always fun. I still do it on the side. I still freelance to cover high school sports.
Q) In terms of the physical content of your writing, what aspect of your articles did you focus on the most?
A) First of all, being accurate. I used to always say I’d rather be right than first. A lot of people mess with putting their stuff out there first. I’d rather my content be correct. I would say my strength as a writer would be my storytelling. Like everybody does game stories, and they’re fine. But there are only so many ways to tell a game story. When I sat down to do a profile story or a feature story, the way I told that story was my strength. I was able to dig deep into someone’s background and paint a picture of that person. I always wanted to peel back the curtain so that readers would understand the kind of person, on and off the field, I was writing about.
Photo courtesy of Jonas Pope IV