Writing his way to excellence

By Chhun Sun
The Collegian

Graduate Joshua D. Scroggin always spoke his mind when he wrote for The Collegian, even if it meant his words might prompt angry messages from people in the forms of letters, e-mails and phone calls. But to him, expressing his opinion was worth it.

Last month, the Society of Professional Journalists nationally recognized the 24-year-old Scroggin for best sports column writing in 2004, beating out sports writers from schools known for their journalism programs. That means colleges like Missouri University, New York University and University of California at Los Angeles.

“It’s all worth it. All that you give up, all the late nights, all the classes that I skipped to do interviews, the three years at The Collegian and all of it legitimizes this award,” said Scroggin, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in print journalism in 2004.

Greg Lewis, his adviser and professor for three years, knows the award is a reflection of the talent at Fresno State.

“It proves something that the faculty knew all along, that we can stand tall and show our talent on a national level,” Lewis said. “Josh is a very talented journalist and he deserves every bit of that award.”

With national recognition under his belt and working as a college sports writer and columnist at The Merced Sun-Star, Scroggin wants to write columns at a metro daily. But for now, he appreciates his award and looks at it as motivation for other aspiring journalists after him.

“We have a quality product and quality students and I don’t think that gets stressed enough to people,” he said about The Collegian.

It wasn’t difficult for Scroggin to come up with ideas to write for his column, Simple Text. At the student newspaper — where he was a senior writer, sports editor and editor in chief — there were plenty of things to write about. All he had to do was pick and choose his subject.

“It was easy at Fresno State because so much was going on in the sports world,” Scroggin said referring to controversies like basketball ticket distribution, disobedient football fans and misbehaving coaches. It was all a part of his sports world.

The difficult part was picking and choosing what he wanted to submit to the annual journalism contest.

So Scroggin went with the article he felt had a chance, although he knew there would be tough competition.

“I was just hoping to win anything, even third place in regional,” he said.

He chose columns about the swimming team being cut from the sports budget, about the dance team getting eliminated and about former women’s basketball coach Stacy Johnson-Klein not taking the team to its best potential.

In one of those columns he wrote, “The swimmers did what they could to try to raise money and avoid being cut from the athletic budget. Who knew that ‘what they could’ included hand-scrubbing bird crap?”

referring to some of the swimmers wiping down the red seats at Bulldog Stadium to raise money.

Then, in March of this year, he received information that he’d won the award in his region, which included Arizona and Nevada.

Then he won the national award. He found himself doing a wiggle dance at his office desk in Merced, causing copy editors and other reporters to stare. But he was in disbelief.

“Oh, my God, I won nationals. Oh, my God, I won nationals,” Scroggin remembered saying. After dancing around the office, he sat down in front of his computers and e-mailed professors, colleagues and friends about his award.

One of the people who received that e-mail was Bill McEwen, a reporter, columnist and former sports editor and columnist for The Fresno Bee. Scroggin met McEwen through a mentoring program created by the mass communication and journalism program on campus.

“I credit him immensely for what I’ve learned, everything he taught me helped me win this award,” Scroggin said.

But McEwen said he couldn’t take all the credit, noting Scroggin always wanted him to review his columns and articles.

“Joshua impressed me with his work ethic and desire to improve his reporting and writing,” McEwen said. “He was going to Fresno State, reporting and writing columns for The Collegian and working part time. I knew right away that he had the work ethic needed to succeed in journalism.”

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