With the Baltimore Orioles preparing for their first Playoff Game in 15 years, O’s beat reporter (MLB.com) Brittany Ghiroli was kind enough to take some questions today from Baltimore Sports and Life about an assortment of things.
For those of you who aren’t as familiar with Ghiroli’s work as I am, you can find her work at http://brittghiroli.mlblogs.com/, where she is constantly posting updates and little tidbits here and there on her Twitter account (@Britt_Ghiroli).
Brittany Ghiroli
MLB.com, Orioles reporter
http://www.orioles.com
http://brittghiroli.mlblogs.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/Britt_Ghiroli
Baltimore Sports and Life: “For Orioles fans that aren’t familiar with how you got your start; how did you get your start covering the Baltimore Orioles as their official blogger and beat reporter, and how long have you been doing it?”
Brittany Ghiroli: “My senior year in college I wasn’t sure what to do, honestly. It was when the newspaper biz was going under and the economy was at its absolute worst. No one was hiring. I had an offer from a really small paper in Florida and was prepared to take that when I got a phone call that winter – about a month after I graduated in December – about the MLB.com internship. I had interviewed, but forgot about it and assumed I didn’t get it. So there I was, in the airport coming back from Vegas, admittedly in pretty rough shape, when I got the phone call that basically changed my life.
In interned for the Tampa Bay Rays that year, 2008, and because I graduated in December and had family in nearby Bradenton, I was able to start with the Rays in February in Spring Training. That year they went to the World Series, a year that I can only describe as very similar to this Orioles team. No one thought they had a shot and they just kept winning. When the internship ended at the end of that season I again had nowhere to go. So I moved back home to Connecticut with my parents and kept bugging MLB.com to let me do freelance work. The closest teams I could help out with were in New York, about a 90-minute drive one way.
I did it all the time, starting on the Mets and then moving to help out the Yankees later in the year. I was part of MLB.com’s postseason team and would get home from those games at 4 a.m. after my drive home, wake up and do it all again to be at the park by 2 p.m. (the postseason is a whole different animal for reporters too).
When that year ended, MLB.com offered me a job on the desk in New York. It was a great opportunity, but I loved being out at the games, being with the same team day-in, day-out and forging those relationships to really tell good stories. I had been doing freelance for USA Today, ESPN the Magazine and a few local papers and had been working part-time nights for MiLB.com.
Since I was living at home I didn’t have a whole lot of other leverage, but I told them I couldn’t see myself work on the desk in an office and they told me to wait because they might have something. I went on a few interviews and came close to taking another job before I was officially hired to take the Orioles job about a week before I had to go to Spring Training in 2010. MLB.com gave me exactly what I dreamed of at 23 years old; a Major League beat.”
Baltimore Sports and Life: “Is covering sports, more specifically the Orioles, something you’ve always wanted to do or did you just kind of fall into it?”
Brittany Ghiroli: “I was an athlete my entire life, all the way up through college where I was a swimmer at Michigan State. Once I got there I realized two things: 1) I wasn’t nearly as good of a swimmer as I thought and 2) I better have a plan for my life because women’s swimming isn’t a sport with a future to pay your bills.
Michigan State has an excellent journalism program and that’s what I always wanted to do – write. I used to write little stories growing up and have always been a pretty big reader and fan of long-form writers like Gary Smith. Plus, I’m abysmal at math. While swimming, I juggled a few internships which got increasingly harder with classes, but the experience was critical. At first, I thought TV was the way I wanted to go and I did work as a PA (production assistant) for Fox Sports Network in Detroit, which started as an internship and continued as a freelance gig. I also helped out the Big Ten Network when they’d come to town for a big game.
I kept writing when I could and worked part time at the Lansing State Journal. It was a lot of grunt work, taking phone calls and filling in tiny box scores about high school games for that day’s paper, but I was also afforded the opportunity to pitch the occasional feature.
I took a semester to go to Washington, D.C. to do another internship – which is why I graduated in December of 2008 instead of that May – with the National Journalism Center, which was another great experience. Political reporting is hard and living in Capitol Hill as a 20-year-old in my own apartment was quite different than East Lansing life. I spent the summer after my junior year in Orland, Fla. where I waited tables and talked my way into the Orlando Sentinel letting me intern. They had never had a summer intern before, but I pestered them enough to change their mind. And Lynn Hoppes, who is now at ESPN, has been one of the many people who have helped me along the way.
Obviously, the MLB.com internship was the one that led me to covering baseball. I get asked a lot if baseball is my favorite sport and – to be honest – it wasn’t at the time. I would stay up late at night watching hockey or football with my dad, and European soccer on the weekend mornings.
But I fell in love with the stories and the nature of covering baseball, there’s so many nuances and so much access compared to football or basketball, that I’ve never regretted that decision. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a baseball fan and I’m from a big baseball/softball family and we all did the travel teams – my sister played at the University of Pittsburgh – but this job enhanced my appreciation of it. It was sheer luck that the internship I got was with MLB.com and I’m eternally grateful they picked me.”
Baltimore Sports and Life: It’s been a long time (1997) since the O’s clinched a postseason berth and had a winning season. How has the Orioles performance this season made you feel as a fan?
Brittany Ghiroli: “No, not at all. I’m not from Baltimore, so it’s been easier for me than others who had the Orioles as their hometown team to separate that sort of thing. With that being said, I am human and the human-interest side of it has always been something I truly enjoy.
How can you not respect what some of these guys have gone through to get where they are?
Baseball is such a story of constant failure, and one of my favorite pieces this year was a Miguel Gonzalez feature I wrote a few weeks back. As a reporter, the joke in the press box is you root for quick games and an easy angle. So many times this year there were so many great moments that happened on the field – and off – it made my job a lot easier and a lot more fun.
I’m lucky in the respect that I’ve covered some pretty special moments in a really short career, the kind that make you call your significant other, parents, sisters – sometimes everyone – to say: “I can’t believe what I just saw.” There’s been a bunch of those moments for me over my career; a couple of them this year. It’s why you love sports. And to quote what the beat reporters jokingly call a Buckism (which is any phrase Showalter uses all the time), “I’m just lucky to have a good seat for all of this.”
Baltimore Sports and Life: “Was there ever a point in your life, early on, where you felt that maybe you couldn’t do it? All the traveling, getting home incredibly late just to get up and do it all over again the next day. At what point did you finally think that you’ve “made it” so-to-speak?”
Brittany Ghiroli: “I still wouldn’t say I’ve “made it”; I have a lot of goals and things I’d still like to accomplish. My parents were always big in instilling that myself and my three sisters could do whatever we wanted to in life and, while they were pretty nervous sending their 17-year-old to school all the way in Michigan, things have worked out OK. Also, I have two sisters in the military and they continuously remind me of what hard work and sacrifice is about and it’s not me spending a few hours in the car to watch and write about baseball.
I never thought about doing anything else with my life because this never stopped being fun. There are days when it’s tougher than others and the travel wears on you –yes, I fly commercial and book all my hotels and flights myself — but it beats a real job. And I don’t have a lot of other skills, haha.” 😉
Baltimore Sports and Life: “Do you see the newspaper industry ever adjusting, or reinventing itself rather, to better service those who want to read the news in that form or is it too late for that?”
Brittany Ghiroli: “I’m a terrible person to ask because I was lucky enough to latch on online and I often wonder what would have happened had MLB.com not given me the internship. I think newspapers are adjusting to the tech-world we live in and some are doing a far better job than others. I still like reading the actual newspaper over breakfast with my morning coffee, but I realize I’m in the minority. And, full disclosure, they’re usually outside my hotel room so I’m not trekking around Baltimore sans caffeine with my quarters. That would be a sight.
Obviously you get your news first online and there’s an advantage to that. But I think there’s still room for newspapers in the grand scheme of things. At least, I hope so.”
Baltimore Sports and Life: “What’s your advice for those who want to break into the reporting world but don’t know the best way to go about doing it?”
Brittany Ghiroli: “Don’t take no for an answer. I didn’t and neither did the people I spoke to. I’m lucky because Michigan State has a great network of journalists, including ESPN’s Jemele Hill and Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson, who were both great to me as a young reporter. Before I took the MLB.com internship, I emailed two MLB.com reporters, in Kelly Thesier and Jordan Bastian, who were MSU alums as well. If you have a network like that, use it. Take people to lunch or coffee and pick their brains. Everyone started somewhere. Join networking events in your profession, pitch freelance ideas to newspapers and other outlets. Find ways to stand out.”
Baltimore Sports and Life: “What one moment sticks out in your mind as the most special, favorite moment that you’ve been fortunate enough to cover?”
Brittany Ghiroli: “Probably the 2008 playoffs with the Rays. There wasn’t one particular moment, but being there for them clinching a playoff spot, winning the AL East, the DS and LCS was incredible. I was fresh out of college and interning at MLB.com and remember thinking, “Wow, people get PAID to be here for this?”
