From Politics to Slam Dunks: My Interview with Chicago Bulls Writer Sam Smith
On Tuesday December 7, 2010 I was given the chance to interview Chicago Bulls writer Samuel Smith for a few minutes as he relaxed at his home in Arizona. In our interview I learned that journalism has no determined path to success; it is about following your passion wherever that may take you. How I reached this discovery was not only because Sam himself said in the interview, “I didn’t necessarily go down the traditional path so to speak,” he said to me over the phone, “But is there a traditional path? Journalism is constantly changing so your path is always different.” This spoke volumes about the rest of our interview, his answers heavily relied on the phrase, “follow your passion” but he truly meant it and I believe that it was Sam Smith’s passion that made his path to success. That is how our paths will be determined, by how passionate we are about our subject matter, how deep are you willing to dig to find the real truth behind the story?
I started off our interview by thanking him for taking time out of his schedule to let me interview him, he was hushed but said it was no problem and glad to help. Then my first question: Before you became a writer for the Bulls you wrote for other papers like one in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the Chicago Trib. What is it like writing about one specific topic all the time?
Sam has been writing about the NBA exclusively for 15 years now, he originally started out as a political writer and his first job was with a wire service for Congress in D.C. In 1979 he moved to Chicago and became a general assignment writer specializing in politics, then transferred to sports. “I originally never wanted to write about sports.” He said to me as I downplayed my faint shock; I read Smith’s writing and I truly see his heart on the paper, he loves to write about basketball so it surprised me when he said that. “It just hadn’t really intrigued me but I did enjoy writing about it.” This was true as he went onto to reveal he had done some free lance sports journalism in the 70s for Black Sports Magazine where he wrote an article about the NBA All-Star game in Washington which featured NBA legend Magic Johnson. After a few years of free lance writing the Bulls contacted him and asked him to exclusively sell his work to their organization. This meant he was not officially apart of the Bulls, but he did have an influence on their fan base. Smith ended his answer with the quote I used earlier about the path to success, how there really is not a , “traditional” path due to the ever changing landscape of the field. I asked for a few moments as I frantically typed down his words and thought about his conclusion to my question.
Looking at Smith’s resume you can see the variations of writing he has done, from politics to slam dunks. He suddenly had a change of heart and fell in love with the idea of writing about sports, so he followed his passion for sports and he is where he is now. As I mentioned earlier passion was a big theme throughout his answers, I asked him what advice he has for a writer like me: a young journalist who one day dreams of having his job. He was kind of mixed of what you need to do, “Journalism has a 24/7 reset button now because people are clicking on the new every two hours,” He told me, “But as long as there are writers out there who have a passion for a particular subject, there will always be someone who will read it.”
I kept on thinking about my passion for sports writing, I partially feared that I would tired of writing about sports and move onto other subjects much like Smith did. Sam put my worries in perspective and told me that as long as I follow my passion I will be subconsciously following my path to success. I believe Smith’s philosophy to be vey true to our modern journalism field because we are constantly changing as young adults. Too often I read the newspapers and read only facts that I already knew about the Bulls game the night before. “Derrick Rose sored X amounts of points to lead the Bulls to a X-X win against the (insert team here).” Was a common line I found in the articles about the games played. I go to www.bulls.com and see Smith’s articles about the game and see something completely different. I see facts combined with his passion for writing about the game. It is simply in his words, the way he describes a play makes you feel like your right there with the player, feeling his emotions and movements. It was Sam’s colorful writing or as he would call it, passion that got him his job. Much like all of us, it is our duty to follow our passion as students to truly find success and make the change that the world needs.
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