Local sports writer holds three decade-spanning career with newspaper

(This picture came from Syracuse.com)

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By Dakota Palmer

Former St. Bonaventure standout forward, 6-foot-1-inch sports writer Donna Ditota, has known since grade school she wanted to be a journalist. A 32 year veteran with the Syracuse Post-Standard, Ditota has covered nearly every sport imaginable: basketball, football, hockey.

“I was an athlete my whole life,” Ditota said. “I was a reader — somebody who really liked sports. It just seemed like that (Journalism) was a pretty easy marriage of a career and something I liked.”

Ditota has received job offers from other publications in the past, but the Syracuse native finds a place at home with the Post-Standard. Originally beginning as a business reporter for the CNY Business Review, Ditota became a sports writer in 1986 and has continued her sports beat ever since.

Most recently, Ditota has been covering Boeheim’s Army in The Basketball Tournament, where their quest to win $2 million recently came to an end. While Ditota thinks her experience as former athlete doesn’t give her an advantage as a writer, she thinks it gives her some advantage as a reporter.

“I think the way I maybe approach a question or the way I phrase questions is maybe a little bit different because I've played and I kind of understand some of the emotions that people go through,” she said. “...whether they've had a good game or whether they've had a bad game and how to sort of massage an answer that i need out of somebody, but do it in a way that i can respect where they're at.”