Broadcasters, like everyone, are looking to find productive ways of coping with social distancing and the hiatus of live sports. Recently, the trend of play-by-play announcers providing “life commentary” has popularized, but TNT’s Ernie Johnson came up with the idea of teaching young broadcasters.
With students sent home from schools at every level, teachers and professors are forced to continue educating from afar. For broadcasting and journalism students, Johnson is here to help.
Tuesday afternoon, Johnson launched EJ’s Journalism School live on Twitter. For nearly 90 minutes, Johnson offered his wealth of knowledge, insight and experience on the subject, while fielding questions from viewers. Johnson’s class amassed nearly 100,000 views.
“The greatest joy I had when I was in those journalism classes, was when our professors … who had great connections would bring in people who were actually doing what I wanted to do for a living,” Johnson said to start the class.
Johnson plans on continuing the class every weekday at 2pm ET with different speakers. On Wednesday, Seth Davis from CBS Sports and The Athletic hosted class, although he was a few minutes late while he struggled to figure out how to use Twitter live.
Thursday’s class features TNT, NBA TV and Milwaukee Brewers play-by-play voice Brian Anderson, with Matt Winer of Turner Sports hosting Friday.
Johnson said he’ll field requests from the students/viewers about who they would like to hear from in the future, while other industry professionals have already expressed interest. ESPN’s Steve Levy, CBS’ James Brown and Stugotz from The Dan LeBatard Show all hope to be involved if scheduling permits.
