Chance Roberts. Communication: Broadcast and Digital Journalism

I chose journalism for a multitude of reasons. My main two reasons I chose journalism were to find a way to be involved with sports and creativity. Sports has been my passion for a long time, and once I was done with playing organized sports in high school, I still wanted to find my way in sports. I have a main passion for American football. I played football for 6 years leading up to my senior year and it has been my life for a long time. I knew I wanted to stick around football. I also knew journalism opened a path for me to get into a creative field, rather than photography, videography, writing, or through speech.

     I chose to broadcast next because I knew I wanted to share my creative aspect of sports. For a long time, I wanted to become a sports announcer. Recently I’ve found my way of sharing my love of sports through sports photography and writing. This semester I’m getting into sports reporting through Take 30 here at Mississippi State. This is my way of sharing my love of sports and it’s through broadcasting.  

     What I love about my concentration is the fact of how much of a bond I can make with people through broadcasting and for a shared love of sports. I feel like there’s more bond between people in this field than you’ll see in a lot of business fields. I also like how independent the field can be. There are people who can make a career off working for themselves and doing exactly what they want. You really can’t do that in a field where you’ll be working in a corporation full time.  

     A project I did for a class that I loved was when I got to help put together a music video for a local artist. In Fall 2025 I took a music production class and the main project we had was to create and produce a music video for a local artist named Lauren Lindsay. We learned about the pre-production, production, and post-production process. With the production, we went out and actually got to film our ideas. This experience was awesome and all the class was about.  

     What I loved about this project was how satisfying it felt to see our ideas really come to life and make something really cool like a music video. I also really liked how much of a group effort it was. Everyone was having fun with it and really hands on and involved with it and brought a good and exciting attitude to set. Putting the music video on premiere and eventually YouTube was a great feeling. Seeing everything you thought of and created on a platform is something I can look back and smile about.  

     My favorite form of multimedia is photography. I say photography because it’s currently what I have the most experience with when it comes to media. I currently work as a freelance photographer for CommercialDispatch. I’m a sports photographer for them and this past fall I shot at high school football games for them. This semester I’m looking forward to continuing to do sports photography.  

    When it comes to writing, I started to do sports writing as well for the dispatch midseason. I typically write 400-500 words per sports article for the dispatch. I really like my work on the writing side, but I prefer the photography side. And as for video, I’m wanting to get more hands on with videography. This semester I want to attempt some sports videography and see how I like it and what I’m capable of.  

     For this class, I’m ready to learn the importance of multimedia journalism. I’m ready to see the importance of multimedia as well. The way I see it now, I feel like multimedia is an important way to gain interaction from a subject. I want to be able to increase my skills in photography, videography, and writing. That’s the main thing I’m looking forward to getting out of this class.  

     This interests me because if I can increase my skill in all three fields, I’ll look better for workers in the future. And not only that, but I’ll also be able to put out a better product for a subject. The better the product, the bigger the following I can build, and the more people will want to come back. That leads me to my career plans.  

     For my career, I want to become a sports photographer and videographer. This is weird to say because I wasn’t sure if I’d get into either coming into college. I come from a family of photographers, so I always saw it as an option, but I wasn’t sure if I would follow suit. I always had an idea I might have, but I wasn’t fully sure if I would. I hope one day to work for a sports team as their main photographer at least and hopefully give a hand in videography.  

Email me at car781@msstate.edu with any questions