Jack-of-all-trades, master of all

In my profession as a sports writer, often you have to become a jack-of-all-trades, master of all.

For the Lawrence Journal-World, I often cover five different sporting events in a week. My bosses ask me to be a miracle-worker when one day I'm an expert at tennis and the next I'm expected to be a guru at cross country.

But this past weekend was unlike any other for me. It was then that they sent me to cover NASCAR in Kansas City.

Now I must start out by saying that NASCAR is an overwhelmingly popular sport. It is currently second only to football in terms of overall TV ratings.

Problem is, I knew nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about it.

After learning the ropes quickly -- like you must do in this position -- I was writing a story after Saturday's race. After reading through it, I stood extremely proud of myself.

"That is one fine NASCAR story," I said, complimenting myself on sounding somewhat competent in a sport (Can we call it a competition? What do they really do athletically?) I knew nothing about.

But then I stopped the gloating when reality hit me. How could I know a good NASCAR story from a bad one? I thought of the 100,000 crazy race fans in front of me and was suddenly almost certain that all of them could read my story and "just tell" that I was a novice because of the way it was written. They probably knew to get their information from a quality source such as nascar.com already.

That's the way my job goes, Sometimes as a "sports" writer, I am sent to cover events, like NASCAR, that I don't even consider sports.

But because I work for a newspaper, one that is more of a mass medium and covers everything, I am expected to do this as part of my job.

I'm not so sure it will be that way in the future.

As people become more specialized with their news content, choosing it on the Internet instead of filtering to find it in a newspaper, beats will also become increasingly specialized to meet knowledgeable readers' increasing demands.

Reporters who haven't covered NASCAR won't be asked to do it. That'll be reserved for the NASCAR "expert" writers, because so many of the readers on nascar.com will expect good, informative, well-focused stories.

And that's where we're headed. Do I like it? It sounds good at first. Seems like I won't have to step out of my comfort zone in the future.

Then again, there is something to be said about accomplishing what you never could, experiencing what you never have, and going where you never would have otherwise.

As a whole, I did not enjoy NASCAR this weekend. But I learned. God, did I learn.

And sometimes, that's enough to make you want to keep experiencing new events -- at least every once in awhile.

We learn by trying. That's what much of this 694 class has been about.

But then, we accomplish by doing. That's what the weekend was for me.

After all, I still am a jack-of-all-trades. But now, I am a master of one more.