Story by Tyler Dudley
Photo by Tyler Dunne / Twitter: @TyDunne
Syracuse, N.Y. - People dream of moving up the ladder in the sports industry until they are working with a major news network such as ESPN or Fox Sports, Tyler Dunne is not one of them.
Dunne has found his passion as an NFL Features Writer for Bleacher Report.
"I love writing about sports because sports is so often not about sports, it's about life and death," Dunne said. "It's about what makes somebody tick,"
Early on in his career, he was a beat reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covering the Green Bay Packers for four years before becoming a beat reporter for the Buffalo Bills for a year. It was there that Dunne's writing was first noticed by Bleacher Report.
After writing a story for his editor he tells me by phone how much he enjoys working from home.
Dunne said since he works at home, during the off-season, once he's had his morning call with his editor, he spends most of his time making phone calls or waiting for returned calls to get a story.
However, once football is in season, Dunne said he is in a different place every other week, sometimes every week.
Dunne said traveling from city to city to track down stories makes his job much more enjoyable than sitting in an office.
Although, he said being a beat writer does come with its challenges. For Dunne, one of those challenges is competing with other beat writers.
"You’re kind of parachuting into these new environments constantly and that’s the challenge," Dunne said. "But I love that chase of trying to find stories that other people don’t have."
He says while he loves sports in general, he favors football because there are fewer games and more of the other stuff.
When looking for stories, Dunne looks back on players' history dating back to when they were in high school. He said whether you talk to their old coaches, family members, or even their friends, there's a story there.
Dunne mentioned how beneficial doing research is to find stories.
He had the opportunity to spend a few days in Cincinnati covering a story about Levantus Burke and how, as a kid, he almost died four times.
Dunne plainly enjoys sharing stories about football that are outside of the game. Interviewing people about their families and backgrounds make for good stories, he said.
Dunne has interviewed Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre, Levantus Burke, and Le'Veon Bell, to name a few.
He said the job is not monotonous, it is quite the opposite and that is what he likes about it.
Despite growing up going to Green Bay Packers games with his dad, being in the locker room with the media and the players strips away all the fandom he had going in.
Dunne said while the industry is changing constantly, sports fans are always wanting to be in the know about their favorite teams and players.
"They demand what you demand, it's like you're a drug dealer," Dunne said.
He said sports writers are the ones feeding fans their 'addiction' through writing, social media posts, videos and all other media outlets.
While he said he is biased about Bleacher Report, he says the industry's reputation has improved drastically since he was a student at Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, graduating in 2010.
Dunne credits a lot of his work ethic to his time spent working at the university's student run newspaper, The Daily Orange.
Dunne said the job changes from day to day, but being able to find and chase original stories that other people don't yet have keeps him going.
He said it is difficult at times because people are consuming news in real time, but writing features allows him to "get into people's worlds and see what really makes them tick."
Dunne acknowledges the changes other sports media outlets are making, but plans to stay with Bleacher Report.
"Definitely the plan is to stay here as long as they value feature stories and I get to kind of do those stories I really enjoy doing," Dunne said. "I’ll do this forever. The passion is there. The love for what I do is there."
To listen to the interview click
here or read the full Q&A below
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dudley: So I was
just wondering, how did you get into Bleacher Report to begin with?
Dunne: So I, let’s see, the first related job I had after
college was covering the Packers at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for four
years, four seasons. And that’s really
where I cut my teeth on the NFL beat. Every type of story really. A lot of
analysis, umm everything to live tweeting a press conference to what I really
like to get into, long-form writing. I mean a lot of features. I went down to
Mississippi and spent some time with Brett Favre and did a thing with Bart Star
in his hometown. It really kind of hit me then that the long form story telling
is what I wanted to do. I wanted to write features and get into people’s worlds
and see what really makes them tick. I think people still enjoy a reading. Even
though we’re on this 2017 climate where everything’s kind of snackable. People are
consuming news in real time. I think the metrics also show that people will sit
down on their phones and read an article whether its online, they’ll read
longer stories. That’s kind of where it hit me that I wanted to focus on
primarily on long form. But then I had the opportunity to come back to the
Buffalo news and covered the Bills for a season, did some more long form, more features,
in addition to the daily beat duties in Buffalo. Buffalo gave me a chance to
come back home, I actually live with my brother here, closer to family about an
hour south. It’s been great, but then Bleacher Report reached out a year into
that job and asked if I’d wanna write features for them and only features. So
all NFL, can live in Buffalo, travel and it’s been great. I absolutely love it.
I get to try to find original stories, it can be difficult because there’s beat
writers in every city, there’s already reporters on the ground in every city so
you’re kind of parachuting into these new environments constantly and that’s the
challenge. But I love that chase of trying to find stories that other people
don’t have.
Dudley: And how
exactly do you go about finding stories?
Dunne: Yeah it’s difficult. There’s a few different ways
to go about it. When you’re on a beat and you’re covering one team, the players
get to know you. You’re making small talk with them regularly. Talking about
their personal lives just off the record. Talking about the NBA, music,
whatever. One thing kind of leads to another and that’s kind of how I found some
of my better stories on the beat whether it was covering the Packers or the
Bills. So, I don’t have that now. Covering the NFL at large, when you’re just
kind of popping into different cities, you can’t build those relationships. So
one thing I did right off the bat was lean on those relationships I did
cultivate those 4 years in Green Bay and 1 year in Buffalo. I have a lot of numbers
in my phone and built up some relationships that were kind of able to last. So
that led to a few stories, I guess one example would be last year I did a story
on Aaron Rodgers. You know, he wasn’t playing well, people were wondering why,
so people kind of dove into what kind of leader is he and I knew some people
close to Aaron Rodgers himself who really offered the details up on how
estranged he was from his family and it’s really sad. From him shipping Christmas
presents back to his folks to not going to his grandfather’s funeral. I think
it was a lot deeper than people realize so I guess the relationships from
covering the Packers helped pay off for more of a national story. And then
another way to find stories you know is just research. I try to constantly read
all the time old stories back to these guys’ lives and careers when they were
in high school and college. Like Levantus Burke, linebacker for the Bengals, he
almost died like 4 times as a kid and it was barely written about. So I went
down to Cincinnati and spent some time with him talking about it. So that’s
another way to find stories. Trends are always big. Like what… I think that you
can find trends in different ways like in a conversation or research but just
conversational. You’re at a bar with somebody, what are people taking about in
football, and into the playoffs a lot of people were talking about LeVeon Bell
running style. It was so different, he would just stop at the line. So I talked
to him about that and whether or not that’s a trend that’s going to continue
for all running backs. So yeah there are different ways to go about it even
though you’re not in one place every single day.
Dudley: How often
would you say you are coming up with stories?
Dunne: I try to you know definitely at least once a week
once the season gets going. Just constantly pitch stories to my editor and then
from there we have a conversation. There’s something you will like and some
that he doesn’t like. Maybe some that can be tweaked and massaged and kind of
veered into a different direction. It’s a really good conversation we have.
Dudley: Would you
say, was it difficult going from working here at Syracuse and working with
collegiate athletics to professional?
Dunne: I think it was a great adjustment because when you’re
covering the teams here at Syracuse there’s a lot of road blocks you might not
face in the NFL. They’re kind of propped up as student athletes and directors
there on campus, don’t get me wrong there were some really good SAD’s I liked
to work with, but you can’t just get one on one interviews all the time after
practices, after games in college. It’s tougher to kind of get that access. It
makes you work harder. It makes you work a lot harder to find stories. I remember
talking to players just on campus or talking to friends of players on campus to
dig up something on a situation, on a player, on a game, on whatever. And then
that can kind of lead to one thing which can lead to the next. It just makes
you work harder when there’s more word blocks so that when you do get to the
pro level, or anything else know beyond college, it could be covering high
schools or whatever after you graduate. You kind of already have that work
ethic engrained. Plus writing for the Daily Orange, I owe everything to the DO.
It was, God, pouring in hours every day and into 3-4 a.m., got that kind of work
ethic that everyone who has been through that system would still credit it to
this day.
Dudley: Now, how involved
would you say you were on campus, while you were here at Newhouse?
Dunne: Definitely involved, I kind of joke with my
parents, I mean they really helped me financially go to Syracuse and obviously
every class you sign up for, you’re paying for and it’s not cheap. But I don’t
know if I can tell you one thing I learned I think in Ancient Greece or Christianity
or Statistics to be honest, but I did what I had to do to get by in my classes.
I put all of my energy and focus into my Newhouse classes and everything going
on there. But like I mentioned, the Daily Orange, we really looked at it as a
full time job. A daily newspaper coming up as an editor through there,
eventually becoming a managing editor, which seems, it felt like you were
already employed even if it was not much for much pay at all. You’re sweating,
you’re grinding, you’re working and realizing where you want to take your
career and if this is the career you want. There are people who worked at the
DO who left the business, they didn’t like it. So I really credit them probably
for hell, maybe even 99% of why I’ve been able to kind of to get to where I
want to right now in my career.
Dudley: And how
experienced were you coming into Newhouse? Do you have a lot of experience as
far as sports reporting or were you really fresh?
Dunne: I tried to get as much experience as I could early
on like in high school. You know every since I remember I wanted to be a sports
writer so that kind of helped. I wasn’t really vacillating between careers. And
you know as soon as I was like 13 / 14 years old it’s what I wanted to do. So I
interned at my daily newspaper near my hometown the Times Herald which was an
amazing experience. Chuck Pollock the sports editor, one of the best bosses I’ve
ever had. There’s been a lot of people to come through the Times Herald who have
learned so much from him. He gave me the chance to write, to cover high school
games, to work the desk. I wrote some columns, some of which probably weren’t
that good but you learn it on the fly, that helped. And once I got into
college, interning somewhere every summer kind of helped. I covered the Packers
a couple summers just for a couple of random, different publications out there.
The Packer Report and then ending at the Buffalo News as well. You learn by
doing, you can, you can read information about it in a book, you can listen to
a professional, journalism, anything media related, you just learn by doing it.
Dudley: Would you
say it was difficult for you to find a job in the industry after graduating?
Dunne: You know, not really. Everybody is going to try to
scare you out of the business and maybe they’re right. It is brutal, moving
around. You know, where there are places laying people off. ESPN has laid
people off, Fox Sports axed their entire department pretty much and they just
do video now. It is tough but I feel like if you build it, they will come. I
mean there’s a ton of hope everywhere you look. Subscription based websites are
on the rise in sports, the Athletic, I believe it’s called, they have markets
in Chicago and Cleveland kind of all over. I think people are reading news and
want to follow their favorite teams now more than ever. The interest is there,
there’ll be a job, there will be a place to write. Monetizing that is obviously
a challenge, but I believe it’ll work itself out. Information, insight,
analysis, long form, all of that is just way too valuable that you know, people
will pay for it. People pay for music, whether its Spotify, Pandora, ITunes. TV
subscriptions, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Go. I think people will pay for information
on their favorite teams. The market will kind of work itself out. Maybe I’m blindly
optimistic, but that’s the hope.
Dudley: I noticed
that you do post quite a lot on social media. How important would you say your
social media presence is as far as working professionally in the sports
industry?
Dunne: Definitely very important. Probably more so when I
was covering one team specifically. You know when I was covering the Packers
and then the Bills, you want to bring those specific fans right to the sideline
of training camp telling them who is looking good, who is not looking good, who
can get cut, who can make the team, to being in the locker room after a game, who
said what that is going to go viral instantly on Twitter, when you’re in that
locker room. I mean you’re interviewing a guy in a group probably with a
recorder in one hand and a phone in the other ready to tweet that out. You want
to bring the fans to wherever you are and that’s the beauty of where we are in
sports media today. You can do that, so it was SUPER prevalent covering a team.
More so now, because I just write long form features, I’m not on there quite as
much, when I have a story that drops I’ll promote it there and respond to people
about it. But definitely, if you’re covering a specific team, it’s gold.
Dudley: Why would
you say you chose to cover football over any other sport?
Dunne: I like football because there are less games and
more other stuff. If you’re covering baseball there’s a game every day, every
single day. You’re kind of chronically in the highs and the lows of the season
in a game setting. I really like the NFL and football in general because there’s
the draft, there’s free agency, there’s more chances to kind of write stories
outside of the game. I mean I love writing about sports because sports is so
often not about sports. It’s about life and death. It’s about what makes
somebody tick. It’s all of these other factors that go into it that you can really
dive into covering football because there’s not a game every day. Basically,
you got 16 games.
Dudley: What would
you say is a typical day in the office?
Dunne: I actually work from home which is awesome. I work
here, I’ll be in touch with my editor first thing in the morning. We’ll kind of
touch base on stories I’m pursuing, calls I’m gonna make, stories we might have
to trash because that just aren’t going anywhere. From there once we kind of
have like 4 or 5 set that I’m pursing to figure out what’s the most eminent story,
then you go somewhere. I’ve got the freedom to travel which is great. During
the year I’m usually somewhere every other week, if not every week, driving or
flying. Spending 3 – 4 days talking to players, talking to their family
members, friends, teammates, then trying to turn that story around in that
following week. So it’s definitely, it’s not a 9-5 job, which I like. There’s
gonna be somedays that I’m up until 12 or 1am working on a story, somedays that
are slower where you’re waiting for people to call you back. Really, the changes
that are in the day to day schedule are what I like about the job. It’s not monotonous
at all, it’s the exact opposite.
Dudley: Would you
say it was difficult from being a fan to a professional in the industry?
Keeping your personal interests out of your work
Dunne: It really wasn’t difficult for me. It could’ve
been because I had a baptism by fire on all of that. I grew up a huge Packers
fan, I would go to games with my dad every year even though we lived in Buffalo
and I followed every snapper from about 1994 on. I knew I wanted to be a
sports writer and journalism would be
the back bone for everything I do professionally. I was able to strip that all
away and it helped because I had those two internships covering two training
camps right in Green Bay. One summer in which Brett Favre tried to come back
after he retired, so it was just madness. Aaron Rodgers’ locker was just
flooded with reporters, there were national reporters and working that everyday,
you just completely use all fandom. Every fan inside you just kind of leaves
the system and at the same time I can understand the passion my readers had. I
knew where they were coming from and the moments that they cherished throughout
the years. And I think that did help me still at times, knowing my base and really
fans and readers, they’re your boss just as much as your editor. They demand
what they demand, it’s like you’re a drug dealer, to use a bad metaphor. You’re
giving that addiction everyday. You’re constantly feeding that addiction
through blog posts, through analysis, through stories, through tweets, through
videos, through podcasts, there is a certain satisfaction that comes out of
that. You know that they are your boss. Knowing where they came from on the
Packers beat that helped me out a lot.
Dudley: Would you
say it’s hard to compete with like bigger names, such as ESPN, Fox, CBS. Or is
it kind of not as bad as you would think?
Dunne: Umm, I don’t think it’s as bad as I would think. I
think Bleacher Report’s reputation has definitely improved drastically through
the years. When I was in college not many people knew what it was. And it
became well its an aggregator, its slideshows, you know all this stuff. They cleansed
a lot of that out, they rehired a lot of people from those other outlets that
you mentioned and from some of the top newspapers. That’s really what caught my
eye. And a conversation just kind of started from there. So I do say Bleacher
Report is a number one spot for a lot of people. I know I’m absolutely biased because
that’s who I work for. You do have those eyeballs, they know how people consume
news. It’s on Facebook, it’s on Twitter, it’s on Snapchat, it’s on Instagram.
And they go to where people are. So when a story drops its going to spread, you
hope, like wildfire and it can be competitive because there are a lot of good
writers out there but that’s part of the fun.
Dudley: To kind of
tie everything up, would you say that you plan on staying with Bleacher Report
or would you ever consider working with a different media outlet?
Dunne: Definitely the plan is to stay here as long as
they value feature stories and I get to kind of do those stories I really enjoy
doing. I’ll do this forever. The passion is there. The love for what I do is
there. I don’t think it’s going to die down or change anytime soon.
