Not all news is negative news!

This is my take on journalism, a potential career for me, and how sport is different, in a good way.
Any feedback would be great thanks
http://richard-mills-sports.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/not-all-news-is-negative-news.html

It's quite a fun career, LS. The station I work at is yet to dedicate a full half hour to sports news, all we get is ten minute clips which will be on rotation for the whole day. I'm not exactly saddened at the fact that I'm in and out of the office in four hours, yet I earn the same amount as the political analysts!

On a serious note, good luck with it if you choose time pursue it, it can mess up your body clock, and bureaucracy is a b.itch to work with.

Well not all of us have your precocious talent KR!
I'm a bit of a big kid. I'm not ready for scary, adult, job life. I'd much rather stave that off for as long as possible!
The pay over here from what I have heard when starting off is far off that I am afraid.
Ta for the comment hope you liked it.

tbh, I got very lucky LS. The original plan was to take a working gap year before studying for a medical degree. I got a a job as a junior reporter/Glorified runner at a news station. The pay wasnt that great, but then a new station opened up a few months ago and they had no one who knew a lick about boxing or tennis... I approached the manager of the station, and he took me in. The station is generally inept, and ridiculously pro-government, but I cant complain when they pay so well, and allow me to take random excursions to Africa on a whim (long as there aren't any major tourneys or fights on).

Don't expect great pay at the beginning, but be on the look out for opportunities as the media world is eternally expanding (we just got a digital team, which means I could take more time off of I wasn't already taking so much off already). I plan to eventually start with the M.D.... just don't know when,

and yeah, I did like your blog post. I generally make an effort to read it up, don't always get it right though.

Lucky for some!
Thanks bud, good luck with the job ad M.D plans!

When Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister it was said that she simply didn’t see the point of sport. It probably wouldn’t have done any good to tell her that the whole point of sport is that it has no point.

It doesn’t achieve anything practical if you judge a nation’s well being in terms of manufacturing or military power or political influence. But it does matter to large numbers of people and it matters to them at a deep and serious level. That would have baffled the Iron Lady and probably has the same effect on all those people who regard sport as an expensive waste of time.

Whatever your view of Mrs T, or anybody else who doesn’t like sport for that matter, I think this blind spot of theirs is a shame. Sport doesn’t have a monopoly on being meaningful but it does bestow wonderful gifts on humankind and in some respects, quite profoundly.

Sport brings companionship. No matter where you are, even if surrounded by complete strangers you can start up a conversation: Weren’t England rubbish last night; Union is better than League; Wasn’t Jess brilliant at the Olympics, eh? It’s not just a man thing either. Increasingly the opinion of women is being taken more seriously, and not before time. The ability of sport to break the social ice has no boundaries except for the ones that we impose upon ourselves.

When you attend a sporting event you become a part of a community. Some of these events can be incredibly partisan but this isn't necessarily so. There's often a sense of shared pilgrimage which is palpable in the air with crowds at, say, Wimbledon or Twickenham or Wembley on cup final day. The cheerful feeling of all being in it together was there at the Olympics in London. Flags of many countries were waved but we were all there, regardless of nationality, because we had a shared passion.

Talking of partisanship...... sport can make divisiveness a form of peace. It’s easy to take sides but all except the truly blinkered know that it doesn’t really matter. The often ribald, sometimes close-to-the-line banter between rugby fans is embedded deep in the lore of the game but nobody ever comes to blows over it. Even between the most poisonous sets of football rivals, I believe there is more that unites than divides. In spirit there is only one united, and that’s all of us.

Mostly, stories about sport bring us positive messages. Some newspaper editors tell us that no news is good news but in sport, good news is the best kind. The London Olympics brought us one glorious story after another and it's no coincidence that some newspapers reported massive increases in circulation during the Games. The Sunday papers after GB’s golden Saturday completely sold out in some parts of the country.

The sports pages emphasise the medal winner, the goalscorer, the first across the winning line. Sport is unique in the world of news media because it prefers to celebrate success above all else. In this way it makes us all feel just a little bit better about ourselves.

All people in professional sport are competitive and ambitious. Some are ambitious for fame and money only but I think they're in a minority and they didn’t start out like that. To become good enough at a sport to make a fortune out of playing it, you have to love it in the first place. You have to love the pure doing of it for its own sake, usually from a very early age. Only then can you think about becoming the best. Many make a lot of money out of sport and good luck to them for that but the very best, deep down in their heart, would do it for tuppence.

Sport offers the pure essence of human aspiration. It's good to admire our fellow humans for something in a more or less uncritical fashion. Who could fail to admire the skills of Sachin, or Usain, or Lionel? We don’t have to lose our heads here, but the performances of such people truly enrich our lives. They make us humbler about our own achievements but in doing so, inspire us to seek our own self improvement. They make us happy that we belong to the same species.

Britain’s passage into multiculturalism has been difficult but it's been made less so by sport. There was a time when we used to throw bananas at black footballers. Now, we cheer to the rafters a runner named Mohammad. Mudhsuden Singh Panesar is known affectionately as Monty and every Saturday we cheer the cream of the world’s footballers, black and white, as they entertain us with their skills in the Premier League. Sport divides the talented from the less talented but in doing so it unites those of us who get involved.

Sport is never far from joy and laughter, especially in adversity. A throwaway jest, a line of banter or a silly comment such as when Wales were beaten in Rugby World Cup 1991 by Western Samoa. One Welsh player commented post match that, if that was how Western Samoa played, it was just as well Wales hadn’t had to play against the entire bloody country..!! Humour helps us to deal with the most desperate situations and as such it reminds us that laughter humanises and heals.

As an idle pleasure, sport provides one of the most easily accessible idle pleasures on the planet. Watch the Ashes test match? Have a beer. Wimbledon fortnight? Strawberries and cream for afternoon tea, I think. When it comes to sport, wasting time is not necessarily a waste of time. Those people who are driven to relentlessly work, work, work, are not representative of the wider human race. Those of us who enjoy sport in all its glorious pointlessness have a certain point to make about life itself.

Even when there is a hysterical response to victory or defeat the alternating extremes are not indicative of a deep malaise. In time, such highly strung people experience a levelling out of their emotions. Victory is great but no, it isn’t really the only thing. Defeat is bad, but hey, there’s always the next game. We learn how to take winning and losing in our stride. Sport, being about success and failure soon tells us that success and failure are not the only things. It's a lesson in equanimity. Behind the superficial thrill or despair of the moment lie more enduring matters such as loyalty, friendship, laughter, consistency, acceptance and even (dare I say it), love.

In the end, if Mrs Thatcher had taken the time to truly ponder the reason why sport matters she would probably still have believed it was pointless and in a way she would have been right. But to take the latter half of the Olympic ideal, it’s about the taking part. If there is any point to sport at all, that would be it.

Nice lengthy post there FL, cheers

LuvSports! wrote:Nice lengthy post there FL, cheers

You're welcome. Sport is a wonderful subject and if you can make a living out of writing about it, then good luck and all the best.

I full-heartedly agree! Thanks again and I hope you liked the article