As a kid, Dan Steinberg always loved sports. Pursuing a career in sports journalism became a no-brainer.

“In some ways, I think I liked reading about sports more than watching sports, which doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Steinberg said. “I never really thought seriously about doing any other kind of journalism besides sports writing.”

Steinberg’s passion for sports followed him to his high school and college years. He credits his preparedness to his early years at The Washington Post, beginning in 2001.

“I spent three or four years at The Post answering phones, making photo-copies, covering small-time high school events, and basically trying to do everything I could to get a full-time writing job,” Steinberg said. “That was the best preparation I could have possibly gotten.”

Now both a Post print writer responsible for page 2 of the sports section and D.C. sports blogger, Steinberg typically has a busy schedule.

“If I’m working from home, I’ll get up, catch up on all the tweets I missed overnight, and then start blogging,” Steinberg said. “I have a list of 10 or 20 ideas saved on my computer, which I’m constantly adding to or deleting from, and I’ll do what I think is the most compelling stuff early in the day. If something really blog worthy happens at night, I might post it, but usually will wait for the morning. By midafternoon, I have to have an idea of what I’ll be writing for print the next day. Usually that’s either an edited version of something I’ve already written, or a couple items combined, but it takes about an hour to complete.”

Steinberg has covered the Olympics in Beijing and Turin as well as the Super Bowl in Phoenix and the Indianapolis 500.

However, his favorite story happened in 2006, the year George Mason, seeded 11, beat number-one seed University of Connecticut in overtime to reach the Final Four of March Madness.

“It was one of the greatest sports stories in the country that year, and it happened with a team I had covered for months, in an arena a few blocks from my apartment,” Steinberg said. “It was the kind of event where you looked around and soaked in the details, because you knew you’d want to remember it for the rest of your life. A co-worker called me that night and told me to enjoy it, because I might never cover a better story in my career.”

Steinberg believes that journalism will continue to change, but the core values of the field will stay the same.

“You have to be willing to adapt, which is really the most important key to staying relevant,” Steinberg said. “I didn’t start at The Post as a blogger, but I’ve learned to embrace everything about the medium. But whatever the future is, the keys to journalism will always, always, always be good reporting and strong writing. Those things never change.”

Visit Steinberg’s blog at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-sports-bog/.