Name: Thomas Bradley
Hometown: Denver, Colorado (though he has moved all over the U.S.)
Major: Journalism with a minor in General Business
Year: Senior
HC: What all are you involved in on campus?
TB: Right now I am Campus Editor for The Lantern newspaper. I am President of the Society of Professional Journalists (Ohio State chapter), and a member of a beginning intramural hockey team. It’s something I like to do every quarter to take a break off of work. But yeah, most of my time is spent in the newsroom doing stuff for The Lantern, out around campus reporting, or organizing SPJ events.
HC: Why did you decide to get into journalism?
TB: I actually came to Ohio State as an aeronautical engineering major and kind of when I was choosing schools I had two things I wanted to do. Back when I was a senior in high school I either wanted to do sports journalism or be an aeronautical engineer. And then someone told me how much a sports journalist makes on average and how much an aeronautical engineer makes on average and I made the wrong decision going into my freshman year. After one quarter taking engineering and math classes, they were interesting to me but I decided I wanted to switch into journalism. I’ve always enjoyed writing, I’ve always enjoyed watching sports and through classes at Ohio State and work with The Lantern, I’ve actually come to appreciate more than just the sports aspect of journalism.
HC: What does your job as Campus Editor entail?
TB: I manage all of the campus reporters and edit content for the front three pages of The Lantern on a daily basis. I assign stories, assign deadlines and assist reporters when giving sources and getting those stories on time. And help with the design of the front page: with my managing editor for design, we put together a daily newspaper.
HC: Have you done any internships, if so where and when?
TB: Over the summer, I had an internship with WOSU, which is the local NPR radio station for Columbus. It’s actually on Ohio State’s campus in the Fawcett Center. I worked as a new media intern where I assisted in creating a new content management system for their website and converted all of their old stories into the new system. I also managed all of their social media accounts; their Twitter account, Facebook account, Flickr account. We actually created our own community-driven photo blog called Capture Columbus and worked there from June until early September when football season started.
HC: How do you balance your time in the newsroom with studying and homework for classes?
TB: I have to be very careful about how I schedule my classes. All of my classes need to be scheduled for the morning because the newsroom takes up most of my afternoon and evening. My ideal schedule is to schedule a class for 9:30 AM and to be done for the day; at the latest [to be done at] 1:30. Just so I don’t run into any issues, I need to be in the newsroom early and don’t want to miss any classes. Being Campus Editor is time consuming but it’s worth it. On average I put in about 50 hours a week in the newsroom editing, working on stories, helping reporters, and making the paper.
HC: What are your career plans after graduation?
TB: Well, there’s always your ideal career plan and then your more realistic plan of where you’ll probably end up. Ideally I’d like to be a beat writer for a sports team at a major daily newspaper. And I realize right off the bat that that’s something that’s just not going to happen one year out of college. But it’s always something to work toward. I have a passion for public radio, which is part of the reason I interned for WOSU and I am looking at a couple of public radio jobs. One would be in Alaska, which is interesting. I do want to do something with sports journalism eventually and if not, any job in this job market I would accept.
HC: What made you decide to attend Ohio State?
TB: Part of the reason Ohio State is such a great university is that there are hundreds of majors and programs to go into. The fact that I was undecided about whether I wanted to do engineering or journalism feeds right into the Ohio State atmosphere. Both my parents attended Ohio State … So [going here] is not only something I can relate to my family with, but I also grew up around that culture without ever being on campus before.
HC: What has been your favorite memory of being a Buckeye?
TB: The one aspect of my favorite time as a Buckeye fan, as a fan of sports, was the Ohio State vs. Wisconsin game. I was fortunate this year to be one of our football writers for the season and got to attend every regular season game, home or away, as either a photographer or reporter. And the Wisconsin game has, as a Buckeye fan, has the most exciting moment in recent history that I was able to attend myself. There were advantages and disadvantages to that game. Obviously, the last second, 40 yard, touchdown pass from Braxton Miller made any normal fan jump out of their seat and start screaming. But I was up in the press box for that play, and in a press box you can’t cheer or react. You can’t really do anything. So I had a little water bottle in my hand and needless to say I deformed the regular figure of the bottle and crushed it with my excitement that I was able to keep inside. Obviously the football season didn’t end how any Buckeye fan would like to see, but where I was covering the team, in the press box, at the game, when that pass happened there was less than a minute left of the game and the entire story I had almost written that was going to be published as soon as the game was over had to be redone. So I had like five minutes to write a completely different story. So that was fun in itself. It was that experience I had that combined everything I love about Ohio State. It combined Ohio State football, it combined my passion for journalism and what it meant to be a Buckeye in that sheer excitement.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at OSU chapter.
