After a lengthy debate and a myriad of input and criteria — from facts, knowledge, video & audio tryouts, live audiences, trivia challenges and panel conversations — we arrived at three winners who will split the $1,000 prize for the 2012 title.

Congratulations to Daniel Radov, Jeff Kryglik and Brett Dickinson for sharing the title this year. All will be given opportunities to participate at WNST.net & AM 1570 this fall as we ramp up our football and weekend coverage, led by the re-emergence of Fox Sports Radio at WNST.

Many of the remaining 13 finalists will also be given chances to contribute at WNST.net as well.

Here’s the speech I gave last night regarding the process and the presentation of the winners:

The post Three-way decision: Radov, Kryglik & Dickinson share 2012 Baltimore Sports Media Superstar crown appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

I’ve spent 21 years learning about this stuff. I’m glad you found my blog to hear and watch my thoughts on where Baltimore sports media is heading over the next decade.

If you make it through this series, I’d love to hear your feedback at nasty@wnst.net

The post The State of Baltimore Sports Media (circa Summer 2012) appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

Daniel Radov

Brett Dickinson

John Sears

Jeff Kryglik

Simon Habtemariam

Josh Levine

Adam McCallister

Mark Brown

Robert Testoni

Chris Cichon

Jeff Gilley

Andrew Tomlinson

Scott Zolotorow

All remaining contestants will continuing blogging, writing and tweeting about Baltimore sports over the next 10 days before our championship event at Hooters in Towson next Thursday.

The post Baker’s dozen: 13 invited to Baltimore Sports Media Superstar finals on July 26 at Hooters appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

The post Our 18 Baltimore Sports Media Superstar finalists await Monday cuts appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

Over the next seven days, more than 30 hopefuls will begin auditioning and doing sports radio at WNST-AM 1570 while blogging and creating Baltimore Sports Media Superstar content at WNST.net. The best and brightest will join us and a few celebrities at Hooters in Towson on Monday, July 9th for the first of two live shows in the competition to win $1,000 and an opportunity to do a weekend show this fall at WNST.

Because this is my fourth time doing this competition, I’ve seen (and heard) a lot of bad radio auditions doomed to failure before they begin.

In 2006, I gave all of the contestants a full hour to do radio. I make a lot of mistakes but this was among the biggest in recent memory. It was excruciating for most of the participants. And I’m sure even their friends and family turned the radio off in pain. Many of them simply stopped talking. One, just waved a white handkerchief, and quit in midstream.

And that was when it was just a radio competition. The blogging and social media content part of the emerging job qualifications have thinned the field even more in recent years.

It’s very, very hard to find top-notch talent to put on the radio and into our WNST.net space on the web these days.

It’s harder than you think to be a Baltimore Sports Media Superstar but somewhere out there this week we’re hoping to start another Baltimore sports media career – all with the explosion of new media, mobile and social media to carry the way. Our Twitter hashtag is #WNSTBSMS

Today, I offer some helpful hints for this crop of “wannabes” and hopefuls.

Let’s see how many follow the instructions!

1.    Don’t bring a script. It sounds awful. It’s not the way sports radio is done. There’s no way for you to script a radio segment and advance your hopes of doing this for a living.

2.    Be comfortable. Dress comfortably. Know your material. And if you’re nervous, you’ll sound nervous.

3.    Ask yourself: would I stop what I was doing in the car and listen to this show? And why would I want to listen?

4.    The power of breath is amazing. Breathe. Talk. Think. Enunciate. Broadcast. Educate. Inform. Make people think and they’ll stay. To engage is to win. The victory comes when people stay and when they can’t wait to hear the next thing you’re going to say because it has significance and value.

5.    Try to have fun. A fun show is one people in their cars want to tune into when they’re driving in traffic.

6.    I always hope that people come into the studio having watched last night’s Orioles game, the NBA draft, relevant and topical information regarding current events like the BCS changes, the Sandusky situation, this weekend’s golf and tennis tournaments, etc.

Have some material and be ready to be great!

Here’s the schedule:

Friday, June 29
2 p.m. – Richard Golden
2:30 p.m. – Josh Levine
3 p.m. — Jason Baier
3:30 p.m. – James Finn
4 p.m. – Steve Katz
4:30 p.m. – Barry Rankin
5 p.m. – Andrew Tomlinson

Monday, July 2
2:30 p.m. – Jesse Jones
3 p.m. – Eric Green
3:30 p.m. – Jeffrey Gilley
4 p.m. – Adam McCallister
4:30 p.m. – Melissa Rubin

Tuesday, July 3
2 p.m. – Stephen Daniels
2:30 p.m. – Brett Dickinson
3 p.m. – Gil Kuta Jr.
3:30 p.m. – Chris Cichon
4 p.m. – Ryan Hiken
4:30 p.m. – Hope Birchfield
5 p.m. – Evan Vollerthum
5:30 p.m. – Robert Testoni

Thursday, July 5
3 p.m. – Ryan Kirby
3:30 p.m. – Chris Cook
4 p.m. – Mark Brown
4:30 p.m. – Scott Zolotorow
5 p.m. – John Sears
5:30 p.m. – Ryan Kerr

Friday, July 6

2:30 p.m. Derek Andrews
3 p.m. – Trevin Jaggars
3:30 p.m. – Terrence Nelson
4 p.m. – Jeffrey Kryglik
4:30 p.m. – Hooters Girls will be in studio to announce and honor the semifinalists for the July 9th live show from Towson

The post Baltimore Sports Media Superstar auditions begin Friday at WNST appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

All of the details of our Baltimore Sports Media Superstar search and competition are now a click away if you want to be a contestant: http://wnst.net/wordpress/wnst/the-2012-baltimore-sports-media-superstar-search-is-underway-at-wnst-net/

This recent blog is very thorough and should answer all of your questions and most of your concerns. I sincerely hope you join the competition and begin your first blog today! This weekend has been active with participation and questions and entries to nasty@wnst.net.

Please do not send docx files as attachments. I’d appreciate all resumes in a pdf or .doc format for sharing purposes.

Also, our hashtag for the competition will be #WNSTBSMS and all Twitter activity should include this easy 8-digit shortcode for WNST Baltimore Sports Media Superstar.

If you want some extended reading, helpful hints and some of the WNST philosophy (and reality) please see my “State of Baltimore Sports Media” series from January 2010 here:

Part 1: Where Do You Get Your Info and Whom Do You Trust In Baltimore Media?

Part 2: How Does WNST Measure Up To Other Baltimore Media?

Part 3: Content and Distribution: Sharing Is Caring

Part 4: Power of Partnership: Flogging The Flag

Part 5: What Is The Future Of Sports Media In Baltimore?

And my three-part update in May 2011:

Part 1: What WNST Stands For In Local Media

Part 2: Journalism is dead…but not at WNST

Part 3: People Ask Me All The Time, “How Big Is Your Stick?”

These blogs are almost a “handbook” and should make the position and our needs at WNST.net even more clear. But, granted, it’s going to take you a few hours to read it and years to digest it but the more you know and understand about the local sports media industry the greater your chances of success.

I wish someone would’ve given me a handbook back in 1992

As a bonus, here’s Part 3 of my Loyola lecture on women, video and mobile streaming in 2012…

The post Updates and helpful hints for next Baltimore Sports Media Superstar appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

And maybe you got a gold watch if you hung around at the newspaper or TV station for 25 years or more?

Here at WNST.net this summer, we’re extending an open offer to any Baltimore sports fan who wants to be the next Baltimore Sports Media Superstar via our competition. All of the info is here…

The harsh reality of media and new media in 2012 is that it’s an all-encompassing commitment of time, experience and continuing education that makes a local personality or entity relevant as breaking news, information, analysis and the games themselves fly by in real time with your mobile device with you at all times.

And that’s just the content side.

Here’s a speech I gave to a Loyola Sports Marketing class in May 2012. This is Part 1 in a series about my current thoughts on the state of Baltimore sports media and the industry as a whole:

If you can’t sell your own personal brand – by bringing in audience, engaging them, adding value to their life experience and adding expertise or analysis that people care about – you will NOT be successful in the new media world.

If no cares to be your audience – or in this era that would be “opt in” or “follow” or “subscribe” — then no one will be available to stimulate the commerce necessary that ultimately will pay your salary via local sponsorship dollars..

In the old days it was easy – there were three TV channels, a few radio stations and a newspaper or two. Whoever the local program director or editor hired was all that the public got and all that you’d ever get from the “inside” of a sports team. The competition for those scarce jobs and the outstanding pay via expensive local television news ads fueled by automotive dealers and local advertisers was all coveted. And the public in Baltimore essentially had three choices for the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news – WBAL, WMAR and WJZ. There were two newspapers – The Sun and The News American. And sports radio didn’t exist except for Charley Eckman screaming bloody murder about some local issue on the Johnny Walker show on WFBR.

That was the entire world of Baltimore sports media in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

And the only ones who really did it the “new world” way were Coach Eckman and Tom Davis, who bought and sold their own “in-show” advertising and made far more money than most radio “talking heads” did and certainly more than the folks at The Sun or The News American.

All of the TV and newspaper people were part of a larger ensemble and staff. The radio sports talk guys needed to fight for audience and those radio stations needed hosts who garnered real traffic and real new business for local sponsors and advertisers.

This is the world I lived in on local AM radio from 1992 until 2006, when tens of thousands of you crashed my webpage and my email with traffic from all over the world after the initial “Free The Birds” walkout and showed me a new world of WNST.net on the internet.

In the new media world, if you can’t sell your own brand as a sports media expert then how can a local sponsor or business owner trust that you can help them sell pizza or cars or beer?

The reality is that I’m in college every day at WNST.net. The college of life, emerging media and business in 2012 and how it relates to the changing ways of sports fans’ consumption of information via mobile devices in real time.

It’s taken two decades but I’ve finally figured out why I went to college back in the 1980’s. All of those beers at Jay’s off campus at the University of Baltimore and all of those evening classes about Marshall McLuhan — it’s all finally paid off. All those classes with Julie Simon and discovering the roots of communication and theory of how the “medium is the message” and emerging “global village” has changed the world in the last decade since the internet has extended our FCC towers at what was formerly a “little AM radio station” at WNST-AM 1570 and brought video and words and statistics and instant feedback into the realm of the palm of our hands via mobile via WNST.net.

I’ve finally figured out the value of my University of Baltimore education and Corporation Communications degree – it just took me 20 years!

While I’m not going to be donating to UB anytime soon – or anytime that the name of Peter G. Angelos

The post Here’s what your local “sports media personality” needs to know in 2012 appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

As many of you know, I worked as a sports writer and agate clerk at The Baltimore Evening Sun from 1986 through 1992. In my second year on Calvert Street, WJZ-TV 13 held an open competition to become the weekend sports anchor. My experience at the newspaper helped me “get a read” — as you’ll read my humorous take on below. This was from the fall of 1988 and I was encouraged by my girlfriend to send a postcard in and most of the rest is in the story below.

If you’re interested in becoming a Baltimore Sports Media Superstar, please read all of the details here. WNST is hosting all candidates during July and doing on-air tryouts with a $1,000 prize and a weekend show at WNST.net & AM 1570.

In the meantime, enjoy what my boss Jack Gibbons published as my editor when he asked me to write about my experience back in November 1988.

I had just turned 20 years old.

One day, I’m going to bust out the videotape and get it to the WNSTV channel on YouTube.

But for now, enjoy some tales from the Nasty crypt…

Feel free to click on the pictures. It’ll make it easier to read in this format…

The post I once dreamed of being a Baltimore Sports Media personality… appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.

Between now and midnight on June 21st, WNST.net will be accepting applicants for the competition, which will begin on Monday, June 25th with open-mic auditions on WNST-AM 1570 during 2 p.m. til 6 p.m. shows of June 29 and July 1-5.

We will audition no more than 60 contestants during our five radio shows and only the best resumes, blogs and cover letters will be invited to the first cut.

We will have a semifinals event at Hooters in Towson on Monday, July 9th and callbacks for the finals on Thursday, July 26th. There will be a live panel of celebrity judges involved in the selection process at the Hooters events to choose the finalists and eventual grand prizewinner.

The grand prize is $1,000 and an opportunity to host a weekly one-hour weekend show this fall at WNST.net & AM 1570 while learning how to become a sports media personality in Baltimore in the era of new media and the internet.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting many “helpful hints, “insider tips” and various videos, blogs and links regarding the job description and evolving status of the local sports media industry in Baltimore and beyond.

If you are a contestant, this will be required reading and viewing because our professionals will be doling out advice, tough talk and Glenn Clark’s “reality check” on the commitment needed to be a sports media personality in 2012 in Baltimore.

WNST.net is now the market leader for instant news, analysis and communications in Baltimore via social media and Twitter. We’ll also be presenting all of the stats to accompany the story of becoming a “Baltimore Sports Media Superstar” in the new millennium and ever-evolving era of new media and mobile delivery of information.

We’ll also be conducting a “State of Baltimore Sports Media” survey with a cool grand prize during July and throughout the competition. We hope YOU help us pick a great new sports talk show host for WNST-AM 1570 and WNST.net as well!

None of us consume media the same way we did five years ago and that will never change. The days of 2, 11 and 13 and The Baltimore Sun are gone forever.

So WNST.net seeks to embrace the next generation of hosts, analysts and bloggers serving Baltimore sports fans with the best new media in the marketplace.

This is the fourth time this kind of competition & talent search has been held at WNST.net and every contest has yielded future employees and great contributors to our company.

This is the real deal.

We’re taking this competition seriously and hope to find many great candidates from journalism, sports marketing, law and communications backgrounds.

Behind it all needs to be a true Baltimore sports “expert.” And our panel of hosts and judges will be grilling and quizzing the prospects throughout the competition in different formats.

We’re looking for serious candidates who want to do sports media for a living. We will be providing meticulous and exhausting information regarding the reality and needs of a successful sports media personality in 2012 in Baltimore here at WNST.net over the next few weeks.

This isn’t for everyone. But we’ll gladly present it to everyone in Baltimore in a completely transparent attempt to improve what we do at WNST.net. As we grow – and any web and social media measurement you can find will prove that we’re the fastest growing media brand in Baltimore – we’ll need more talent and more stars for our blogosophere, radio station and website and social media community voice.

Honestly, this information might overwhelm some of you who aren’t cut out to make it in this field

The post The 2012 Baltimore Sports Media Superstar search is underway at WNST.net appeared first on We Never Stop Talking Baltimore Sports.