Elle Wood

Salisbury University

Dr. David Burns

COMM 495-701: Internship to Communications

Placement: Delmarva Sports Network

Spring 2023
 The sports world full of experiences that many people may never get a chance to

experience in their lifetime. I have been an athlete for many years, and I know that my life would

not be the same without these experiences. One of the main changes would be my choice in

careers and my goals. I want to become a sports broadcaster. This is because of the love I have

had for sports since I was a child. I played many sports throughout my life and knew that they

would be very hard to give up. I currently play on the field hockey team at Salisbury. Knowing

that my athletic career would come to an end after college, I thought of all the ways that I could

continue to stay involved with sports through my career. Sports broadcasting is what I decided I

wanted to pursue to keep me involved with my passion for sports.

In being a sports broadcaster, I can stay involved in the sports world. More importantly, I

can share stories of athletes, coaches, and organizations in the sports world. I have been very

grateful for the experiences that I was given because of sports, and I want to be able to help share

other’s stories and successes. The way to be successful in this field, and almost every career

field, is through experience. As the end of my college career is fiercely approaching, I have not

had the opportunity to gain much experience in the sports broadcasting field. This is because of

my commitment to my team and academics during college. I knew that I wanted to take

advantage of the internship course offered in the communications program at Salisbury because I

wanted to gain experience in the field before the end of my college career.

This internship was my first real experience in the sports broadcasting and news world.

My choice of where I wanted to complete my internship was easy for me to make. During my

senior year of high school, I received a scholarship from WBOC, a local news channel in

Delmarva, for their Scholar Athlete of the Month. I met one of the sports anchors when they

came to my high school for an interview and to present me with the award. We talked about my
interest in the field, and we even joked around that we could potentially work together someday.

It all came full circle when I had the opportunity to intern with the Delmarva Sport Network

(DSN) during the spring semester of 2023. We had the opportunity to work together while I was

an intern.

The Delmarva Sports Network is in Salisbury, Maryland. It is owned by Draper Media,

the umbrella company for various television and radio networks. These networks include,

WBOC, WRDE, Fox 21 Delmarva, 42 Telemundo Delmarva, WBOC 102.5, 93.5 The Beach,

107.1 The Duck, Coast Country, 100.9 WAAI, Big Classic Rock 107.7, and the Delmarva Sports

Network. The sports network was added to the Draper Media family at the beginning of 2022.

They cover local sports, focusing on high schools, colleges, and minor league affiliates in the

Delmarva area. DSN is the only all sports live and local television station in Delmarva. They are

on air 24/7 providing Delmarva with the latest sports coverage in the area.

The network’s staff is small, but very talented in the work that they do. With the network

only being on air for a little over a year, they have been constantly working hard each day to

keep improving the content they are putting on air for their viewers. I am very grateful to have

been able to work with a staff so passionate about their work. It made such an easy environment

to learn in. Even with their busy schedules each day, they were still able to help me learn and

taught me a lot about different areas in the sports broadcasting field.

I feel that my experiences at this internship have only confirmed and secured my career

decisions. Coming into it, I was very excited to begin, but also very nervous at the same time. I

was nervous that I would learn that this career field was not the right fit for me because I had

never had any experience prior to this one. With only having one semester till graduation after

this one is completed, I did not want to change my career goals this late in my college career.
However, I quickly learned that was not the case at all. I knew I wanted to stay in the sports

broadcasting and news field because of my experiences during this internship. I easily saw the

goals I stated above of sharing athletes, coaches, and organizations successes or stories with

others through the work that was at the station daily. They covered different sports and athletes

each day with various types of content. They produced live games that showcased various teams

and sports, conducted interviews with various people in the sports industry, and followed many

different stories that were all used as content for the network. My passion for sports only

continues to grow, and I really want to share my passion with others and showcase others who

may have the same passion that I do. Each person has something that makes them who they are,

sports is that thing for me.

Although this internship confirmed my career goals, the experience was not what I

expected. This was not a bad thing. On my first day, the other intern and I were asked to go with

the team to observe them produce the live game that was on the channel that night. Going in, I

had no idea what to expect. I watched from the production truck, which was where the director

and producer did all their work. The truck was where everything was connected, and inside

included monitors, screens, and lots of technology. As I watched them produce the game, I

realized that a lot more went into creating this content than I thought. I remember when the game

was completed, they explained to me that it looked very intimidating, but they would help me

learn what to do.

I was also very surprised at how fast the content was created to be put on air. With news,

it is obvious that content that reporters seek out is created and put on the news very quickly.

However, I did not realize how much goes into creating the content, and it still gets put on the air

very quickly. They go out and get the content, then when they get back, they look through all the
content they recorded and find a way to put it together to tell the story they want to give to the

audience. However, they may have a bunch of other tasks to get done in between putting that

certain story together. They still manage to complete all that work, plus getting the story ready

for that same night. It made me realize that this career involves quick turn arounds and deadlines

that can be difficult to reach with other projects going on simultaneously. All the content they

display is still of very high quality that shows hard work and attention. This is a challenge that I

would be willing to pursue. In being a student athlete, I have dealt with the quick deadlines and

quick turn arounds with my schoolwork and practice schedules. I do not feel that I would suffer

in that type of environment. I think I could keep up with the fast-paced environment and create

valuable content for audiences.

This internship was full of experiences that I learned a lot about the communication field,

more specifically the sports communication in the field industry. It was very impactful to my

education because I would have never learned any of this without my internship experience in

my college career. Going into this experience, I wanted to remain open-minded and open to learn

anything they were willing to teach me. This would prepare for future jobs because of what I

learned.

Before beginning my internship, some of the courses I have taken at Salisbury University

prepared me in some way for this internship. I took the “Writing for Media” course during my

freshman year. Although this was a while back, I felt that I used some of the writing skills that I

learned in that class helped me with my writing that I practiced during my internship. I also took

“Journalism I” the previous semester. This class focused more on writing for print news, but

many similar skills were required to have successful writing for broadcast. The writing was not

the same, but I feel that the course did help me have an understanding going into the internship.
 Because I want to become a sports broadcaster/anchor, the team worked with me to

develop my skills that would benefit me the most to be successful in the field. One of the first

lessons I learned was that my writing skills were crucial. I will have to write lots of scripts. It is

important that they are formatted properly for broadcast news. I learned more about writing for

broadcast. In some of my past courses at Salisbury University, I learned about writing for various

types of content, however television was not one that was focused on very heavily. They gave me

advice to help me write my scripts. One of my first practices in my writing was writing a script

for highlights from a basketball game. They put together highlights from a game that we

attended. I then wrote a script that I would later read in the studio at the table. For my first time

doing this, it went better than I thought. They explained to me that with writing highlights the

most important thing to do was to write exactly what was being seen on the screen. I was able to

do that very well. However, there were times when I needed to add some more while the clips

played out. That was an area I struggled with in the writing. They did explain to me that part

would be difficult for me specifically because I did not know the players like they did, and I did

not have any other information about the game other than what I was seeing on the screen. When

I practiced reading the script following the video, it was very evident that it was important to be

able to fill in where there would be blank space between the plays.

I also learned how to write scripts for packages. A news package tells more of a story

than highlights do. A package can contain interviews, video, and audio that tell what is going on.

The script writing is also a little different. The script should match what is being see in the video,

and when introducing the sound bites from the interviews, the script cannot say exactly what the

person in the interview is saying. It still needs to be introduced in a way that relates to what they

are saying. I have included some samples of packages I helped create and write scripts for in my
webfolio under the Samples/Videos section. I found this to be the easiest script to write.

Although writing highlights was mostly writing what was going on, I feel that the writing for

features allows for a little more creative freedom, which is why I felt it was easier.

I also helped write scripts for some of the content on their show. They have a late-night

show that airs Monday-Friday called The Final Score. It covers different content that happened

during that day. It has packages that the staff creates, scores from different games that they did

not cover, coverage from some of the professional sports in the area, and more. They would give

me the story topic they wanted me to write a script about, then I would write it for the time

length that they needed it for, usually about 30 seconds. They would proofread my work and then

add it in the show if they wanted to use it that night. I have included examples of some of these

scripts in the Samples/Videos section of my webfolio.

Another skill that they helped me develop was reading the scripts in the studio at the

news table. This was my first experience reading scripts in that manner. The first time I did, I

was very nervous. I noticed myself reading very quickly and trying to get through my script as

fast as I could. However, the more I did it, I slowed down and read the content how I would if I

was reading it to myself. They gave me advice each time I did it, and I took their advice each

time to make the next time that much better. Some of the scripts I read were my own, and some

were ones that they had written for previous content that they let me use for practice.

Of all my experiences at DSN, these were some of my proudest moments. As I said

before, I never had any experience in the news and broadcasting world before, so I was not sure

what I was expecting going in. However, I was ready to learn and gain experience in the field.

These are the moments I am so proud of because of the growth I had in such a short time. The

first time I attempt these writings and readings, I was very nervous and did not do the best in
doing so. However, after listening to the advice the staff gave me, I used that to better my skills. I

felt that I improved each time. I would not have this experience without this internship and the

help and advice I received from the staff was very valuable to me and helped me gain my first

experiences doing some of the work a sports anchor would do.

They not only helped me learn skills to help me as a sports anchor, but I was also able to

learn some of the behind the scenes work of working with a sports news channel. I had the

experience of helping with the behind-the-scenes work of producing the live games that were

broadcasted on their channel. At this internship, I feel that I learned at least a little about each

aspect of the work that they do at their channel. I am very grateful for that because it only

benefits me for the future because I have the experience all around rather than only certain skills.

With the behind-the-scenes work, I helped run the graphics during the games. The graphics were

included in each part of the game. For example, they do a pregame show. They would display

some graphics including, the announcers’ names and Twitter links, the Look Back that explains

the results of the previous games for each team, the Keys to the Game that explain what the

coaches told the anchors that would allow the teams to be successful, and the starting lineups for

each team. During the game, I kept track of stats and the scoreboard that was displayed on the

screen for the viewers. This involved starting and stopping the timer and the score. Some sports

had different stats to keep track of than others. For example, in basketball, the time and score

were obvious ones, but I also kept track of timeouts and fouls. The fouls helped to display the

bonuses if either team were in the bonus or not. In baseball, we kept track of each pitch. This was

because the scoreboard that was displayed on the screen included the pitch count that each

pitcher was at. We also displayed the count for each batter, number of hits, number of errors, and

the score.
 At first, this was intimidating because I was scared to mess up something. This is because

the game was being produced live, so if I made a mistake there was no going back to fix it.

However, they ensured me that they have made plenty mistakes doing this and that it was okay if

I did. After the first few games, I got the hang of it understood the system well.

Overall, I learned a lot about the sports communication industry. I learned a lot

about the production of a live sporting event and what it takes to get everything ready behind the

scenes. I learned to create content for news and the techniques to create good content. All of

what I learned through my internship has been a very valuable part of my education in my

college career. I would not have learned much of this without my internship experience. I feel

that a few of my courses I have taken at Salisbury have helped prepared me for the work I did at

my internship.

Through this experience, I learned a lot, which means there was lots of mistakes and not

understanding everything I learned. However, these mistakes did not disappoint me in any way. I

learned from the mistakes to help me get better. The only thing I would change would be to have

more availability to come to the station to learn. As student athlete, my schedule is not the best,

even in the offseason. I still had plenty of time to reach my hour requirement with my internship,

but I wish I still had more time to come in and learn. This semester flew by, and it is hard to

believe that my internship has already come to an end.

My experience at DSN has been an experience that I am very grateful for. I was able to

work in a very open environment that I felt very comfortable to learn in. The staff is very

passionate about their work and strive each day to create content for their viewers. They work

countless hours that have allowed them to grow so much over the past year and a half to get to

where they are today. My first real experience in the sports news world was very valuable to my
education. I learned so much about the production of news content, writing for broadcast news,

and presenting television news. I would like to personally thank the entire staff at the Delmarva

Sports Network for the opportunity to learn and work with each of them. This experience has

only confirmed my goals of becoming a sports anchor when I graduate college.