Terrence Payne
Managing Editor
Time flies huh?
Clichéd first sentence, I get it, but I’m not good a good-byes. Okay that’s also a cliché. Time to get serious.
For the past four years I’ve been a member of the school newspaper staff and in return it has helped propel me to new levels as a writer during my time here at Springfield College and hopefully beyond. I started in the fall of 2009, never getting a story until the second semester. Thanks Justin Felisko, hope Colorado is fun!
Finally I got my break, I was going to be a sports writer with my first event … covering women’s gymnastics.
I understood I needed to start with pieces like that and work my way up. Through the semester I moved on to covering women’s basketball. The following year I was the assistant sports editor, then sports editor for my junior season. After serving as the editor-in-chief during the fall semester, I’ve handed off those responsibilities to Gabby DeMarchi and now I wrap up my time with The Student as the managing editor.
My work with the school newspaper gave me the clips that helped me land internships with a summer baseball league team and the Springfield Armor of the NBA Development League. Then I moved on to paid freelance work. First with MassLive.com, then ESPNBoston.com and now I currently serve as a contributor to NBC Sports’ College Basketball Talk.
[Insert reference to Drake’s unfortunate hit single “Started From the Bottom”]
All of this started with my work in the school paper; writing and learning. Improving my skills and building on my work.
Heading into the real world I look back on my experience at the newspaper and view it only as a positive one. It wasn’t just sports I wrote about. I had to write about crime, films and other campus wide stories. I may be the first sports editor in the history of journalism to write about the Vagina Monologues.
Obviously I didn’t do it alone. In fact, I had the rest of the newspaper staff carried me through the years. All of the editors I’ve dealt with – too many too name – all the way to the amazingly talented four editors I worked with this year.
Joe Brown and Gabby DeMarchi have truly been the leaders of this paper this year, from generating story ideas and helping groom younger writers. Alison Dombroski has done a terrific job making the newspaper look better and better each week while simultaneously listening to my rants on Drake all the way to last night’s rant about how Django Unchained isn’t correctly working on iTunes.
Jimmy Kelley helped me for the past two years, as we were basically the sports section for all of our junior years. He also eats dinner with me on Wednesdays, the day we put the paper together, so I don’t feel like a Stephen Glansberg.
But most importantly, thanks to professor and advisor Marty Dobrow for driving my interest in the school paper and having the knowledge and enthusiasm that made me want to stay with it for all four years.
I won’t miss the long Wednesday nights, but I as I leave Alden Street this spring, I know Springfield College will always be with me.
Mainly because, as a commuter this semester, I know that every time my car leaves campus, I’m bringing my fair share of the commuter parking lot with me.
T. Payne out.