by Janie Townes
Denver Nuggets logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“I don’t think this seat is safe back here, it’s not even bolted into the van,” said Blake Steele, trying to get comfortable in the back seat of the van heading to watch the Nuggets game. When the students from CMU reached the parking lot of the Pepsi Center, the suspense was brutal wanting to get into the building to watch the Denver Nuggets take on the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Before the tip off, the students were lucky to meet public relations intern Cody Wise. Wise attends Metro in Denver, and works in the Pepsi Center taking game notes, and prepping the “media bible.” This job is tedious because all the information from the game needs to be updated continuously and correctly. Box scores as well as the game notes have to be handed out every quarter to the press box.
On any given day, Wise checks his work up to five times, just to be sure his recordings are correct. Wise said, “Do something you’ll love in life, you won’t have to work a day in your entire life, it’s my dream come true to work beside the Nuggets.”
Wise’s status with the Nuggets helped CMU students get personal interaction with the players themselves. His foot in the door was connections, the reason he still is with the Nuggets is because of everything he does.
The class was fortunate to meet the beat journalist for the Denver Post, a very intelligent and outgoing man named Benjamin Hochman. Hochman had many words of advice, to the future journalists.
Hochman said, “When you do an assignment, you can either half ass the hook or take real pride in it and always make room for imporvement.”
Hochman knew what he was doing, he knew how to be funny but also serious in situation that required it. Hochman interviews people by being humble and making the person feel comfortable by finding out something he had in common with them. He found he received unrehearsed answers from them using this manner.
When it comes to the coaches, Hochman told the students how to interview them. “You really have to be patient with coaches when interviewing them about loses since they are obligated to speak to the press even when they don’t want to.” Hochman made it a must to not ask them questions that would anger the coaches more, but instead to ask more positive questions.
Even though the Nuggets lost to the Cavaliers by one point, the students too home a life time of good advice and many good connections to use for networking in the future. The sports writing class piled in the van one last time and arrived home late that night, and the buzz of the trip has yet to stop amongst the students and staff.
