Familiarizing Yourself with a topic

This past week at the station was pretty interesting. Yes, there was the usual work of cutting clips and preparing Habs stats and news, but a pretty noteworthy event took place in Montreal last week. That was UFC 158 in which Georges St. Pierre took on Nick Diaz at the Bell Centre. Normally I don't follow MMA that much, but when GSP is fighting, it's usually the talk of the town, so I found myself following the sport a lot more, because I wanted to be able to competently talk about it and follow along with the coverage the station was giving it.

 I think every sportscaster has to be familiar with multiple sports and has to be aware of what fans care about and not just their own preferences. Too many sportscasters don't know much beyond one sport, whether it's hockey, football, soccer, etc... That usually leads to over-saturation of one sport that's given too much coverage. MMA is one of the world's most popular sports and it keeps growing, so this week served as a reminder that branching out is important as a broadcaster. It applies to every domain of journalism, but it hits home for me in sports. I have to keep trying to learn more every day to become, a 'master of my domain.' It's all about being versatile. I feel comfortable talking about multiple sports, but that job is never done. You can always learn more, and I felt this week served as a great reminder for that.

This coming week, it's back to more Habs stuff, but I will also be familiarizing myself with the Impact more, as they have had a great start to their season and that's a topic worth exploring on the show. As well, on April 3rd, there is a screening of the new movie, '42: The True Story of an American Legend', which is of course a new film about Jackie Robinson. I'm going to cover it, as I think it would be a nice change of pace for my work at 690. Warren Cromartie, founder of the Montreal Baseball Project will also be there, so I could speak with him about the movie and see if I can get any information on the progress on his project.