NEW TECHNOLOGIES FORCING JOURNALISM/JOURNALISTS INTO NEW REALMS OF MEDIA
MEGAN E. STUTTLE
October 29, 2009
BUFFALO, NY -- Jerry Sullivan leans back in a chair, donned in a short sleeved button down t-shirt, glasses, and a blue Titlist hat. He’s relaxed, calm, and his wrists lack a watch. These traits are some that one would never think a man would hold who has so many deadlines to consider. “I’m a whack job, let’s face it,” Sullivan exclaims, speaking of his opinions about his own career and the work he’s done throughout it.
Sullivan is the senior sports columnist for The Buffalo News, where he’s been for the past twenty years. Being a columnist, Sullivan is able to share his opinion with the city of Buffalo and enjoys the fact that he “can just lay it out there,” where “it” is referring to his opinions about the National Football League’s team in Buffalo, the Bills. Being a sports columnist was not always where Sullivan saw his career going, however.
Being one of three children in his family, Sullivan grew up in Newport, Rhode Island playing and becoming a fan of many sports. He would listen to Red Sox games on a transistor radio and dreamt of being a sports announcer. His first taste of writing came to him when he attended the University of Missouri when he wrote for the school paper. Sullivan loved it.
When his first story was published about his fraternity’s golf tournament, he immediately cut it out and taped it to his wall. “It gets in your blood,” he explains.
After graduating from college with a degree in Journalism, Sullivan traveled to cities such as Binghamton, New York, Syracuse, and Los Angeles. He left sports writing to become a news writer while residing in the city of Syracuse, New York. “Sports become deadening after a while,” he says, considering it “redundant” at times. After only six months, he moved to New York City to write an NBA column for “News Day.” Sullivan settled in Buffalo, New York in April of 1989 to write his column.
Although great opportunities have arose for Sullivan to write about several Olympics, Superbowls, and Mohammad Ali’s 1994 visit to Rochester, there are some cons to his career.
Once a married, family man with three children of his own, Sullivan is now divorced. He was away a lot and missed a lot of family events. “Have an understanding spouse,” he advises to anybody thinking about a career in journalism.
He also lies awake at night thinking about his column and is a self proclaimed “fearful writer,” causing him write in a more automatic and hurried fashion. He finds that the interviewing part of his job is unrewarding, which is why he enjoys writing his column solely based upon his opinions. Although he is the only columnist that is specific to the Bills that is able to give his opinion, Sullivan claims that having an opinion column can have its drawbacks and he often wishes that he could write about something else.
“How many different ways can you say the quarterback stinks and the coach isn’t good?” he asks. Not being a Bills fan himself, he even finds it frivolous and irrelevant at times.
“You can’t be a fan of the team that you cover,” he explains, “fans are among the least objected people in the world.”
Sullivan’s main priority of writing his column for the Buffalo News has become a part of a list of priorities, though. Sullivan has an online blog, a live chat every Friday, and hosts a radio program on WGR Sports Radio two times daily on Mondays and Fridays at 7:05 AM and again at 5:00 PM.
Sullivan writes about four columns in the paper each week, but writes several blogs per day. “The column is the job, I do that just to feed the beast,” he states, confessing to hurrying through writing his blog entries.
This paradigm change in journalism technologies has been difficult for Sullivan to adjust to. He produces his blogs because he has to, but chooses to ignore the online networking trends, Twitter and Facebook. “Maybe it hurts me in some ways,” he says. This may be true, considering that use of alternate journalism media such as his blog has given him an advantage of having more outlets to connect with his readers.
Sullivan’s opinions in his columns and blogs are often shared by the community. He declares that he is “in tune with what people are thinking.”
“Be curious, be a reader, love the language,” advises Sullivan to anybody who has an interest in writing. He reveals his belief that writing has an essence, “every little detail means something. Maybe I’m just crazy.”
Sullivan receives about two hundred e-mails regarding feedback to each of his columns. He receives even more when the Bills lose a game. “Sometimes people wanna just pour their heart out to you,” he says.
Because of this growing technology and faster internet retrieval speeds, Sullivan is able to read each one of these e-mails and tries to reply back to each one.
In the age of new technology, Sullivan hopes that he can continue writing his column in the newspaper for a long time. “The line has been blurred because of the internet,” he says, “Who knows what’s going to happen to newspapers.” But he happily claims that Buffalo has “one of the most stable newspapers in America, if not the most.”
