The MSU men’s basketball team may have fallen short of winning the title, but we are claiming the sports media championship for MSU Sports JRN. We had more than 20 students at Little Caesar’s Arena in Detroit, working from March 15-18, as reporters, play-by-play/color for IMPACT radio, correspondents for our Spartan Sports Report show, writers for The State News and isportsweb, sports information assistants, and photographers.
Profs. LA Dickerson and Joanne Gerstner were also on hand the whole time, taking in the experience with the students and serving as on-call editors. There are always some students covering MSU sports for student media at the NCAA Tournament. The twist this time was getting the Spartan Sports Report credentialed as professional media and having 6 students get to work with the NCAA as sports information assistants. That plan was hatched last Sept. by Joanne, and after months of emails/calls…it worked perfectly – our credential request was submitted and quickly granted in February…way before anybody knew MSU would be playing in Detroit! We were first in line with our students, and we got to send the biggest crew.
The sports info students went into the locker rooms, interviewed players and quotes, and gathered information for the NCAA to hand out to reporters. The University of Detroit Mercy was the host school for the tournament, and they said our students were amazing. We thank them, and PJ Gradowski, so much for their kindness.
Our alumni recognized we had a lot of students working and made a point of saying hi.
So Spartan offensive failures in basketball aside, MSU did win this weekend!
michiganstatesportsjournalism.com 