Staff Q&As: Meet sports copy editor Travis Pickens
To help you get to know our newsroom staff a bit better, a series of question-and-answer posts with each journalist will run on Mondays. This morning, meet sports copy editor Travis Pickens. On any given night, he pulls together the pages for the sport section while contributing content to GameTimePA.com.
Name: Travis Pickens
Lives in: York Township
Hometown: Altoona
Position at the YDR: Copy editor (sports department)
Years with the YDR: One
Graduated from: Slippery Rock University
With a degree in: BS in Communication
Email: tpickens@ydr.com
Twitter: @travis_pickens
1. What made you want to become a journalist? I had an interest in the industry.
2. How do you see journalism changing? I think it will move more toward a Web-based focus as we’ve seen recently with more Web-only features (ie: videos, blogs, etc.)
3. What do you like most about your job? The least? Most: The variety of doing a different section almost every day. Least: Waiting for West Coast games to finish late at night.
4. It’s 9:30 a.m. on a day off. What are you doing? Lifting or running
5. What’s been your favorite project or story recently? Why? Even though I didn’t do much with it other than editing, I’d have to say our high school football tab. Doing the brunt of the work on one of these at my old job for five years made me appreciate the hard work and attention to detail that goes into one of these. And I think the people that spent the majority of their time on our tab made it one of the best in the District 3.
6. The drink that’s on your desk right now is: Water from the fountain by the bathroom
7. Your favorite journalism-related blog you read or Twitter feed you follow: Any of our full-time or part-time writers whose updates help me stay connected with sports in York County.
8. What’s your favorite movie? Book? Movie: Training Day; Book: It
9. What’s your favorite place in York County? Gold’s Gym York South
10. What’s one piece of newsroom jargon that had to be explained to you? What we refer to as RTV and AX. I was thoroughly confused on Night 1. RTV = the radio and television file that can be found on our scoreboard page every day. AX = our local high school and college roundup file. It’s short for across York County.
Last week, we ran a Q&A with multiplatform journalist Matt Anderson. To read all of the staff Q&A interviews we’ve done so far, click on the “Staff Q&As” under “About us” at the top of the homepage.