Hi

Just thought i'd come on the forum and try and drum up some support for my Exeter City blog at the Times Online: http://timesonline.typepad.com/fanzine_fanzone/exeter_city/index.html

My blog is the only one from a team not in the Premiership or in the Championship Play Off's! (oh and Derby...) Just wondering if the forum (any Exeter fans in particular)could give me any feedback on it!

Thanks

Pete

I read the post about FC United/AFC WImbledon when it was stuck up on our message board. The concensus over there was that it was 'a brilliant bit of journalism'.

I thought it was a great read, but I've been reading 'Tell Me No Lies' by John Pilger recently, so stopped short of calling it brilliant journalism.

I'll certainly be going back there in the future though.

Thanks, hopefully ill get the ok to carry it on into next season.

Want to have a full-time career in sports journalism but at a bit of a crossroads at the moment....

I thought I was at a crossroads, but I've been walking down this road for so long I assume I took the wrong turn back at that t-junction I reached seven years ago.

That was no t-junction, that was otf...

How right you are.

I recently got turned down for a post-graduate course at the final hurdle as my 60-page cuttings folder of football related articles wasnt broad enough... So just trying to work out my next move, and see what opportunities are about for a 20-year old budding sports journalist...

Enjoy doing the blog and it's a good way to get some cuttings although no payment unlike many similar concepts in other newspapers/magazines

You'll - in my experience - have to work for free for at least two years to get anywhere near a job with shit pay anyway.

I did it in a year of work experience, but that wasn't in sport. Have you thought about going into other areas while keeping the blog going? Or (and I know this will be quite dull) going into your local paper?

Well im just about to graduate with a decent degree and plenty of football reports, work experience and articles here and there (including one in WSC)but ive been told a lot of times to get on the NCTJ course and also to forget it!

In the past couple of weeks I've had my Dad tell me to forget it. My girlfriend to tell me to forget it. One of my mates laugh at me for thinking I can still make it work. And I appear to have given up on it myself an all.

But, you know, the dream lives on.

Yeah ive contacted my local papers and been told to send my CV in and be put on file.

I work weekly as a freelance journalist reporting on League Two/ Blue Square Premier games which gurantees me a cutting every week! Need to get sending emails out now my dissertation is done!

Fuck me, this thread is depressing. Great blog though, ebs, hope you keep it up.

Ha ha thanks! Just gotta keep plugging away and putting my name out there, my CV's on my personal blog (peterevans.wordpress.com) in the vague hope that someone may come accross it and be impressed....

Thanks to everyone who checked out my blog, please keep commenting below the articles etc, it might make the front page of the Times online!

Welcome to OTF, Pete. Your blog is excellent, although I don't stop by as often as I should (if I read every blog I like every day, I wouldn't have the time to do anything else).

Mine is two this month, which is some sort of achievement, I guess, though I'm less than certain that it's anything to be proud of. I have to toss up whether to knock it on the head after the Euros, completely revamp it or just keep plodding the same, lonely furrow. I don't really think it works in its current format (being strictly chronological is simultaneously liberating in that I can write about whatever is current, yet at the same time restrictive in that I often feel compelled to write about things that I don't much care for), but I don't have the mental or physical will to do much about it. All I know is that it feels a bit stale at the moment.

As you may have gathered, I have a pretty chronic problem with self-confidence and self-belief. Career-wise, I can only say this: basically, if you ask for advice on the subject, do the absolute polar opposite of what I suggest (if I base it on my own experience).

One final thing (and I'm almost certainly pissing in the wind, here) - EIM, you're an outstanding writer - you really should just knuckle down and write something. I'd be delighted to put up anything that you cared to send me.