Her first course, Sports Journalism, had an enrollment of 24 students, including Emily Hybl, then a third-year pre-law student.
Flash forward to August 2022 and Hybl is the sports show producer for an ESPN Radio affiliate in Los Angeles, the country’s second largest media market.
Among the interns at her station this past summer was Khuyen Dinh, a fourth-year student at UVA.
As the internship ended, Hybl sent a note to Clay that praised Dinh’s imagination, work ethic and responsibility. “If she graduated,” Hybl said, “we’d all want to hire her.”
Clay’s program, somehow, filled up. She had reason to be proud.
“To me,” she said, “it was a great testament that we formed a collaborative, creative, intellectually inspired UVA alumni network within the industry at large.”
Pushing for Progress
Clay is now part of UVA’s general faculty as a media practice assistant. Read also : Watch: Hutchinson man enjoys first day of legal sports betting in Kansas. She has expanded to offer three courses under the sports media and storytelling umbrella – Sports Journalism, Sports Media Production and Athletes, Activism and the Media – and has a growing list of alumni working in the field.
Like Hybl, many of them are women.
“What I like is that what’s happening at UVA mirrors the industry in general, because there are more and more women going into sports media,” Clay said. “Although that number is gradually growing, it is growing – it is not linear. Progress can be incremental.”
In September 2021, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport published a report on race and gender among sports media. The study evaluated more than 100 newspapers and websites with the intent of measuring changes in racial and gender hiring practices against a 2018 study of the same practices.
When it comes to adding women to the newsroom, the changes – such as female sports columnists rising from 16.6% in 2018 to 17.8% in 2021 and female sports reporters rising from 11.5% in 2018 to 14.4% in 2021 – were subtle. More than 80% of sports editors were men.
As Clay attests, there has long been a “boys club” tag attached to sports journalism. On the other hand, she is proof that women can thrive in the industry. Her portfolio (she writes under the name Anna Katherine Clemmons, her maiden name) — loaded with clips from ESPN the Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and other nationally renowned publications — is inspiring, said Dora Friedman, a third-year student. and president of the chapter of Association for Women in Sports Media of UVA.
“It makes you realize you can do it,” Friedman said.
While Melissa Stark, a 1995 graduate and sideline reporter for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” is UVA’s shining example of a leading woman in sports media, products of Clay’s program are already starting to make their mark.
Hybl, who has been in his role with 710 ESPN Radio in LA for 16 months, was on location at SoFi Stadium in February to produce shows surrounding Super Bowl LVI between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.
Emily Caron, a senior writer for sports business digital platform Sportico — and another student in Clay’s fall 2016 freshman class — broke college football news last July when she reported that Barstool Sports was taking over as the exclusive title sponsor and broadcast partner of the. Arizona Bowl. She was also the first to report on basketball star Dennis Rodman’s daughter, Trinity Rodman, becoming the highest paid player in National Women’s Soccer League history.
Other former Clay students (male and female) working in sports include:
“As a woman who has worked in the field for so long,” Clay said, “I’ve always tried to encourage and empower young women if they feel so inclined toward that career.”
Guiding Careers
Hybl was working as a legal assistant at a local law firm when she took Clay’s course. See the article : Emmys: Music Category Nominations Show Big Differences. Law school may have been in her future until Clay’s sports journalism performance gave Hybl second thoughts.
“I was at an inflection point of what I wanted to do in my career,” Hybl said. “A mentor of mine said, ‘Go back to what you wanted to do when you were 10 and see what core you can try to do – and that’s what will make you happy in your career in the long run.’
“Well, when I was 10 years old, in my yearbook, I wrote, ‘I want to be an ESPN sports broadcaster.’ So I’m like, “Okay, cool, let’s see if we can do that.”
