{"id":13509,"date":"2014-10-21T11:58:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T15:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/news\/article.php?ArticleID=13509"},"modified":"2014-10-21T11:58:15","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T15:58:15","slug":"13509_nationally-respected-sports-journalist-kelly-whiteside-joins-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/2014\/10\/21\/13509_nationally-respected-sports-journalist-kelly-whiteside-joins-faculty\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationally Respected Sports Journalist Kelly Whiteside Joins Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you bring instant national recognition to a brand new degree program? By hiring one of the very best professionals in that field. This is the first year of the Journalism degree program for the School of Communication and Media, and the professional is the esteemed Kelly Whiteside, who joined the faculty this fall as an assistant professor in Sports Media and Journalism. Prior to that, Whiteside spent 14 years at USA Today<\/em> as the lead Olympics writer, World Cup soccer writer and national college football writer. Prior to joining USA Today<\/em>, she was a reporter at Newsday<\/em> and a staff writer at Sports Illustrated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In spite of her impressive background in journalism, Professor Whiteside says she always knew she would want to teach at some point in her career. She has previously gained teaching experience as an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has also taught sports journalism part-time at Rutgers University. At MSU this semester she is teaching Writing for the Media, Sports, Media and Society and Cross-Platform Sports Writing.<\/p>\n

In her career, she has covered a total of seven Olympics and eight World Cups, as well as the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL and major college sports. One thing that she loves about sports writing is that sports and society intersect in so many interesting ways. \u201cI started as an urban affairs writer in graduate school and then I got an internship at Sports Illustrated. From there I realized how you can write about anything when you write about sports: financial issues, legal issues, criminal issues, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked for memorable moments from her time covering the Olympics, she immediately mentioned the historic significance of seeing Gabby Douglas become the first African-American All-Round Gold medal winner in Women\u2019s Gymnastics at the recent summer Games in London. However, another favorite moment for Professor Whiteside was a bit more personal. She recalls being at the 2004 Athens Games covering Women\u2019s Soccer. The US Women\u2019s Soccer teams\u2019 gold medal win that year was very meaningful for Whiteside. She had covered the team through their famous World Cup win in 1999. That team, many of whom were retiring that year, including Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Julie Foudy, is \u201cprobably the most important team in the history of women\u2019s sports,\u201d said Whiteside. The team was highly influential in making girls want to play soccer on a team. \u201cSeeing them win the gold \u2013 they even wore the laurel wreaths on their heads – it was a great way to see them go out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Whiteside also holds the distinction of being the first woman to become president of the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA). For a one year term, she says, \u201cIt was an honor to be the face of that organization.\u201d Since she served in 2002, there has not been another woman elected to that office. When asked why she thinks that it, she responded that it\u2019s been too long since she served. \u201cThere\u2019s got to be somebody,\u201d she says somewhat puzzled. She believes that there are many women who would do a great job in that role.<\/p>\n

Professor Whiteside says that even though we may be seeing more female sportscasters, print and digital media is still lagging behind the times. \u201cThere have always been a good number of women who cover the Olympics,\u201d she says. But, for example, when covering college football, \u201cI was often the only woman in the press box.\u201d Professor Whiteside believes that this needs to continue to change. <\/p>\n

Professor Whiteside is also the co-author of the book, \u201cA War in Dixie\u201d with Ivan Maisel. The book is an in-depth look at the football rivalry in the state of Alabama between the University of Alabama\u2019s Crimson Tide and the Alburn University Tigers. \u201cIn my opinion, it\u2019s the best rivalry in sports,\u201d she says enthusiastically. \u201cSince the state of Alabama has no major league football teams, all the energy is concentrated on these two college teams. It may be hard for people in this part of the country to understand because there is nothing comparable to it here.\u201d In fact, she says it can best be summed up by something that an equipment manager at Alburn once told her. \u201cHe said, \u2018The best thing about this rivalry is also the worst thing about this rivalry, it means too much to too many people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The move to MSU could not have been more \u201cserendipitous\u201d for Professor Whiteside. She has been a resident of Montclair for a number of years and also has a three-year-old daughter. \u201cIt was tough to be away on assignment for weeks at a time.\u201d Now, her daughter actually comes to campus with her and spends the day at the Ben Samuels Children\u2019s Center on campus. However, the fact that the details of this move \u201cfell into place\u201d for her is not the main reason she is happy to be a part of the faculty of MSU. She makes it a point to mention that Journalism is a major for the first time this semester. In addition to that, Sports Journalism in particular is a growing field. Thanks to the internet and the prevalence of sports websites, jobs in sports journalism are plentiful right now and there has been an increase in Sports Journalism programs across the country as well. \u201cSo it\u2019s an exciting time for the field and I am very excited to see how we grow in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Rosemarie Salvatore<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":113509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-of-communication-and-media-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}