| Adia Revell '05, Member of the Barnard-Columbia Women's Basketball Team, Interns for ABC Sports
 As part of her internship at ABC Sports, senior Adia Revell has gone out in the field, literally, with ABC sports reporters while they interview football players from the New York Giants and the New York Jets. Side by side with local on-air journalists, Revell has taken notes and quotations from the players, both on the field and in the team locker rooms after practice games.
"I've seen it all," Revell says. "But when I'm in the locker room, I'm not thinking about being female. I'm just trying to get the story," she says.
Revell then uses her notes to write "stand-ups," 10-second scripts that are filmed on the field and will be edited together with game footage to create feature stories. Although her features will not air, Revell says the experience has been both fun and valuable in moving toward her goal of becoming a sports anchor.
"This will help me build my on-camera portfolio," Revell says. "I would not have gotten this experience sitting in a classroom talking about theories of communication. The best way to do it is to actually do it."
And, to prove her point, she quotes her first stand-up in a her best sportscaster voice: "The biggest thing for the Giants to focus on right now is bouncing back from their loss last week and proving to everyone that, even without their biggest threat--Michael Strahan--they CAN still win. I'm Adia Revell, Channel 7, Eyewitness News."
Brooklyn-native Revell began the internship at ABC Sports in September, after answering an open call interview she learned about on the Barnard Career Development Web site. She estimates that 300 students attended the open call for all ABC divisions, and of those, six students were offered positions in the sports department.
Her main responsibilities at ABC include analyzing live games on screen for the "big" plays and then relaying that information to the sports editor/anchor. But under the guidance of reporter Jenna Wolfe, the first female sports anchor within the Philadelphia sports world, she has gained the on-the-field, hands-on experience.
Revell admits that she wasn't a huge football fan when the internship began, but she knows a thing or two about big plays, having been a member of the varsity Barnard-Columbia Women's Basketball team for the past three years. And with basketball season just starting, she looks forward to going to Nets and Knicks practices with Wolfe.
Revell sees becoming a sportscaster as a natural extension of her love of sports and her desire to work in the media. "Sports are a huge part of American culture, and being a female, and an athlete, I want to use my experience and be a face to this world," she says.
Psychology might seem like an unlikely major considering her aspirations, but Revell explains that an understanding of people is critical to working in the media.
"Being a psychology major has helped me even now--it has helped me to analyze different personalities and be more empathetic. If you want someone to help you with a story, they have to like you and want to open up to you. Or if you want to appeal to the viewers, you have to get them to like you too, to want to know what you're saying."
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f you would like your work as an intern featured on the Barnard web site, please send an email to Suzanne Stein, Internship Program Coordinator, at sstein@barnard.edu. Indicate where you are interning, what you are doing, and why you would like to be considered.
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