Overcoming Your Fears in Journalism

“Don’t be afraid, just do it.” – Steve Jobs.

This is the message that ESPN.com’s senior editor of blogs, Matt Lee, so often directed towards Steve Fox’s Sports Journalism class during his talk with the class on Friday.

He pulled the “don’t be afraid, just do it,” quote from Jobs’ biography, and applied it as advice, throughout his speech.

“If you want to be a journalist, don’t be afraid, just do it,” said Lee.

Lee used Jobs’ advice when he attended George Mason University as an undergraduate student studying journalism. George Mason is not in the same breath as the upper echelon journalism schools, said Lee.

“That was a chip on my shoulder,” said Lee.

In his first year at college, Lee was not involved on campus. He was afraid.

But after a year, he broke out of his shell and joined the campus newspaper. Eventually, the time came for Lee to interview for jobs.

His first interview came in D.C., and halfway through the interview he knew that he wasn’t getting the job. Instead of becoming discouraged, he used the interview as practice. 

“If you apply, and they tell you no, then you’ve lost nothing, you’ve just gained experience in interviewing,” said Lee.

Lee left school seeking one of the three career paths available to journalism students in the late 1990s: a newspaper, a radio station or a television station.

When a job came along at the Washington Post’s website, he was afraid.

At the time, many viewed the dot.com boom as a “fad” that wouldn’t last, and he described the Post’s website as “primitive” at the time.

But he decided to overcome his fears and take a chance with the job.

After a number of years with the Post, Lee moved to ESPN for a job as the lead editor of the Insider section of the website. The job came after Lee, again, decided to chase his dreams rather than stay stationary with fear.

One of his former co-workers at the Post notified him that ESPN was hiring. The prospect of working at ESPN was daunting to him. But he decided to throw his hat in the ring and see what happens. He applied for a job on the news desk and did not get it. However, because he applied, he got his name out there to ESPN, who later hired him for the Insider position.

Lee now works as an editor of the ESPN.com blog network. Who knows if that opportunity would have arisen if he hadn’t mustered the courage to at least try for a job at ESPN.

The final thing that Lee emphasized to the class that resonated with me was the concept of embracing the unknown. In one of his power point slides, he displayed all the technological advances that had been made since he graduated college. Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone, Instagram and even Google did not exist.

This made me think about the technological advances that are inevitable in the next 15 years. And then I started to think that another Facebook, or Twitter, or Google is out there, yet to be discovered. And that scared the hell out of me.

But then I remember Steve Jobs.