Nick Eilerson’s introduction to journalism came with little intentions of pursuing the career, but instead with the motive of bantering the school’s baseball team as a joke in his senior year of high school.
Now Eilerson is the sports editor of the Fairfax Times, a weekly, well to do local newspaper not suffering the fate of larger prints like the New York Times and Washington Post due to the “hyper local” news content it carries not covered by main stream media outlets. After working for about eight months for the Fairfax Times, Eilerson personally enjoys the opportunity to write and report on sports games and events for a living.
“The fact that I get to write on a regular basis is great,” Eilerson said. “That’s probably where I get most of my enjoyment, trying to be creative with my writing, being a good writer. But also I enjoy reporting, getting out there, and interviewing people.”
Eilerson was born in Dallas, Texas and attended Maggie Walker High School. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2011, majoring in English with a minor in Spanish, where he operated as the sports editor for the university’s newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. Soon after, he did an internship for the Washington Times where he was given the rare opportunity to cover a Washington Redskins game.
“I felt pretty official coming out of college being told to cover a Redskins game,” Eilerson said. “Of course that was back when they sucked before Robert Griffin III.
Though Eilerson had originally planned to be with the Times for the summer of 2011 he stayed instead for eight months due to the economic recession. In early 2012 he signed onto the Washington Post for six months writing for the high school sport department before reaching the Fairfax Times.
Unlike most journalists, Eilerson does not have a set time he needs to report to the office. Instead, he is allowed to work on his own schedule given he will reach the Wednesday deadline of the weekly paper.
“Some days I got up at seven, and get to the office at nine, and stay there just cranking out stories until four,”Eilerson said. “Other days I can sleep in, eat a leisurely breakfast, kick around some story ideas, and then maybe go cover a basketball game that night. It just depends on the day.”
Eilerson also stated that his position at the Times would be considered more leisurely than that of a local government or crime and business writer.
“They [my friends] are kind of jealous because usually I get to sleep in,” Eilerson said.
Eilerson is a firm believer that the print newspaper will go out of business before he dies, expecting that the focus of journalism will shift to a primarily online basis. He also feels that newspapers will need to adapt to the changing world of journalism.
“They [newspapers] don’t know how to make a profit off of what they’re doing online,” said Eilerson. “That’s a big problem. That’s what they need to figure out. It [journalism] is certainly changing in new ways, and a lot of that is with technology.”
Another key to the future of journalism, Eilerson believes, is the need to be more “tech savvy” and knowledgeable in the landscape of multimedia.
“I think journalism is growing and it’s changing,” Eilerson said. “As a whole I think there are more reporters coming out every year, and they’re going to different platforms and different outlets. The biggest changes are that you have to be faster in an increasingly competitive world, in every field including journalism.”
See Eilerson’s bio for the Fairfax Times, go to: http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/personalia?ID=GZNIE
