Graham Hill: My intro to journalism
Allow me to reintroduce myself.
My name is Graham Hill and I just finished my first semester at Pitt Community College. I have hopes of transferring to North Carolina State University to major in communications, and working for Neuse News has been great experience so far.
Over these past six months I’ve been given the opportunity to broadcast games for local high school sports alongside Junious Smith, and it’s been awesome. I would’ve never thought that at only 20 years old I’d already be pursuing my dream career and working in the field with Neuse News.
With 2019 just beginning, I thought I’d take some time to reflect on the past six months working at Neuse News and some of the fun I’ve been having so far.
Junious Smith and I began working this past football season doing the Neuse News Game of the Week on Facebook Live Audio each week. At times we would face adversity, but overall it was a really awesome thing to do, and it was fun working with Junious for these games. I got to cover some great ones too, including a thrilling overtime game between Kinston and Wilson Fike.
The coolest thing for me was thinking about how we were becoming a part of history in a way. No other local news outlet has ever attempted something like what we were doing, broadcasting games on our Neuse News Facebook Page for fans of different schools to listen in on. I also knew that our broadcast wouldn’t end with football season because as everyone knows, basketball is something serious here in Eastern N.C.
Here we are now in the midst of a highly competitive basketball season for our local high school teams, and our commentary is still continuing. We've teamed up with Lenoir Community College to sponsor our games every week, and we’ve already seen big games this season like Farmville vs. Greene Central. Another big game was round one of Kinston High vs Greene Central, an overtime thrilling game that lived up to the hype.
With only eight more weeks of high school basketball remaining, I’m sure we have some more great games to come. I can’t wait to see what some of these Eastern Carolina Conference games have to offer. Being able to commentate these local high school games has been something that has bought me a lot of enjoyment, but it isn't the only thing I've been doing for Neuse News.
A little side project that Junious and I have been working on under Neuse News is The Flourish Hill podcast. We’ve already made three episodes with the fourth one on its way, and you can listen to previous and future episodes by visiting flourishhill.com.
On each episode we break down the competitive atmosphere that high basketball has to offer here in our area. Recently we were joined by special guest Jay Wilson, who came on to discuss the great basketball atmosphere for Greene Central.
With school, commentating games and the podcast, to say these past six months working for Neuse News has been busy would be an understatement. However, I am extremely grateful that I am getting the opportunity to do all this and I look forward to continue doing it in 2019.
