Let me address Shemar first. This one's for you buddy:
OK. Now that I got that out of the way, let me say hi to all of the SJI family from ESPN in Bristol, Conn. Waking up at 7:45 every morning is, quite honestly, not the same without a trip to Poynter and a sports check looming. Unlike the rest of you, I'm at a purely desk job, working nine-hour days at the ESPN.com copy desk. Basically, I get to read ESPN.com all day before stuff actually goes on ESPN.com, so it's pretty cool to see all of the content before it comes out on the website. Sometimes I wish that I could be out, traversing the mountains of Denver or drinking the salty lakes of Utah in hopes that the one big scoop will come my way, but this isn't a bad alternative. It took alot of transitioning, though, especially since I had to learn all of the new computer programs pretty quickly in order to not fall back too behind.
ESPN, by the way, is massive. I'm talking like a 250-question sports check massive (were it converted into cubic feet and man power, of course). When I thought about ESPN in the past, usually it was from a strictly editorial sense, because that was what I wanted to do. I saw the anchors, the editors and the writers. But the majority of the interns here aren't on that side. Most are on the production side of things, like splicing video clips and preparing them for SportsCenter. Two of my roommates are on the research side of things and other interns are dealing with human resources, internal communications, technology or even sales. The sheer manpower that goes into this company is absolutely insane.
But the perk is that famous people just casually walk by my desk every day. Jamal Mashburn was a frequent visitor to my building on the first day and Chad Ford recorded his personal voicemail greeting just in front of my cubicle today. Want to get some food? Sure, sit next to Adam Schefter. (Incidentally, they're called "The Talent" here at ESPN.) Exciting right? Cookies for Prewitt!
By far the highlight of my first week, though, was going into an editorial meeting on my first day. There, all of the assignment editors went through their stuff to alert dot-com and the front page staff about the day's big news. And, of course, representatives from all of the ESPN local sites were present (via phone).
Need I say anymore? I e-mailed him later in the day telling him that I was present in that meeting, and Mr. Carter sent me back a response saying "WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY HI?" But with 14 exclamation points instead of one. I think he misses us. Why else would he keep telling us to vote on the back page headlines? To drive up traffic? No...Keep informing the world, friends. I know you're all killing it across the country.
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