As I've mentioned previously on this blog, I am a great lover of sport and in my job I have the enjoyable and rewarding task of promoting and reporting news and sporting success from Leeds Met on a daily basis.
You can imagine my excitement therefore when I learnt of the itinerary for the second Carnegie Sporting Words festival which took place this month in Leeds and Harrogate.
Whilst sporting commitments meant I wasn't able to attend the packed Saturday programme of events (I was busy, losing 6-0 for my struggling football team, FC Gateway), my interest was taken by a series of seminars on the Friday, entitled "Success in Sports Media" held at Headingley Carnegie Stadium.
With an excellently calculated start time of 10.30, we eased into the day with a lecture/seminar from one of our own academics, Dr Dan Laughey who spoke extremely eloquently on 'The Sports Digital Media-scape'.
Dan unpacked some of the most pertinent recent changes to 'Digital Britain' and gave an insight into the history of sports broadcasting, including the entry of juggernaut BSkyB into the marketplace and the advent of subscription and pay-per-view sports viewing.
Next on the agenda was a Q&A session from Ben Fry, Head of Station at Yorkshire Radio. Ben talked about his own experiences of broadcast journalism and the importance of work experience and tenacity to break into the increasingly competitive marketplace. He explained the station's relationship with Leeds United and the boldness of their DAB digital radio approach and the how the digital switch-over had been affected by the credit crunch.
The boss of Harrogate-based marketing agency The Lift Agency then gave a presentation in which he talked about his own work with the Beckham brand and his involvement with Beckham's endorsement of Police Sunglasses. He also enthused the listening students with the variety and excitement of working in sports marketing with global brands including West Ham United and Adidas.
The morning session then finished with an interactive session with Head of Press at the Premier League, Dan Johnson who talked about his own career path to date and fielded a number of questions about the league's response to pertinent questions in the murky world of football from a knowledgeable and passionate audience.
With such an interest in grilling such an influential figure in the nation's favourite sport, it was inevitable that we would overrun, so it was over a shortened lunch break that I was able to start to digest what we had heard in each session. It was clear that sport is dominated by brands, whether these be products or players and that the sports industry wields an incredible pulling power in the face of the current economic climate. It is also apparent that the landscape is constantly evolving, with social media, digital innovations and the way we watch and interact with sport having changed dramatically over the last twenty years.
The first session after lunch was the one I had been most looking forward to - another question and answer session - this time with BBC bloggers Ben Dirs and Tom Fordyce, who's articles are some of the most popular on the BBC Sport website. They spoke honestly about the perception of blogging (somewhat negative) amongst some traditional journalists and some of the weird and wacky things they've got up to through their blogs. They explained how they managed to persuade their bosses that it would be a good idea for them to spend seven weeks travelling around France in a camper van for the 2007 Rugby World Cup and spoke of their obsession with pretty much every sport and the importance of having a depth of knowledge.
The final session of what had been an exhausting but excellent day in my quest for sporting knowledge, saw the Howden based Press Association give a comprehensive presentation about how their organisation worked and fitted into the press landscape. Of particular interest, was the growing importance they gave to producing video reports to accompany their traditional written output, including the employment of a number of VJ (Video Journalists). With such scope and global reach, it was clear that the PA is a key and trusted player in all forms of journalism.
It really had been a fully packed programme of seminars and it certainly felt like I had been bombarded by a giant wave of sports media wisdom from some of the industry's key experts. Due to the aforementioned drubbing on the football field, I missed what sounded like an excellent edition of Five Live's Fighting Talk on the Saturday morning and more importantly missed Yorkshire's finest sporting guru, Harry Gration's Sporting Heroes event in the evening, which was very well received, as Harry is somewhat of a legend in these parts.
However, I was satisfied with a meaty set of seminars and discussion which inspired and provoked and also reassured me that we were on the right lines with our coverage of sport at our own great sporting institution. Our You Tube videos seem to be proving popular with punters, although maybe only to laugh at my fledgling attempts to be John Motson (note to self: keep the microphone still whilst presenting!) and our Twitter account is firing full steam ahead, keeping Tweeters abreast of the latest happenings from University Sport and beyond. Still work to be done perhaps, on improving my radio voice, but the future is definitely bright for sport here at Leeds Met.
I look forward to attending next year's Carnegie Sporting Words festival and trust that the organisers will bring us an equally relevant and captivating programme of events to sustain our sporting appetites.
Mark Dorey
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