Ari Wohl knew that he wanted to study sports journalism, but it was only when he attended the summer camp at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication that he realized that he was going to Arizona.
The native of California fell in love during the camp and returned to win not one, but two degrees in four years through the Accelerated control program.
“Sports journalism is not a program that you can find across the country, but Cronkite had a program focused on sports journalism,” said Wohl. “There is no better place to get practical opportunities than the ASU.”
Wohl will graduate with his Master of Mass Communication During the spring of 2025 spring of the Cronkite school, where he will also be one of the honored students of the price of exceptional graduates. He obtained his baccalaureate in 2024.
Before joining the ranks of other “Double Devils”, Wohl shared with us his experience in Cronkite and his advice for future students.
Note: The interview was published for more clarity and conciseness.
(ASU) Tell me a little more about your summer camp experience in Cronkite.
(Wohl) Sports journalism was not a program that you could find across the country, but Cronkite had a program focused on sports journalism, and I am almost instantly in love in two weeks. I was lucky to go to a diamondbacks game, to be in the press, to call a round of the game and to be surrounded by professional people. I fell in love in 2019, then I came back.
Paola Bovin (Cronkite school teacher) said: “There is no better place in the country to get practical opportunities.” When I came here and started working in the first year, I knew I had made the right decision.
What were the advantages you came to the ASU in California?
The ASU is a perfect mixture. You are out of the state and independent, but it is also a 55 -minute flight, and I can return in a day if I had to go home. Phoenix is close to his home, but also far from home, and time is not too different, nine months of the year.
What is something unique in the Cronkite school?
The Cronkite News Phoenix Sports Bureau is so different from everything you get in a classroom. I was there four days a week this spring, working with two different groups of people. This effort to collaborate friendship, while being in class, trying to do a job and work seven hours a day, was an opportunity so different from everything I expected.
Is there something that surprised you or changed your point of view?
I was like 96% of the people who come to the ASU and study sports journalism, they want to be a broadcaster, on the air and playing the game. I would hear the upper classes say: “Be open to let these things change”, and I thought they were talking to everyone because I knew what I wanted to do. Now here I am four years later by telling the subclasses the same thing. Be open to letting things change because for me, they did it. I learned that I liked much more than the broadcast, and I am grateful to be open to try these things. The university is the ideal moment and Cronkite is the ideal place to try new things.
What are your projects after graduation?
This summer, I will go to Israel to represent the United States in the Maccabiah 2025 games as part of their media team. After this month, I will start looking for a full -time job working in sports journalism to some extent.
What inspires you most in the future of journalism?
Cronkite does it well in the sense that you have learned to do journalism the right way. We are at a very important moment in our history where journalism is not always considered in the best light. It is really important that people my age know how to tell good stories, report in fact and do the necessary things to advance journalism according to the standards that we want it to hold. Cronkite does a good job to teach these things and it makes me feel confident that my comrades and I will do great things and that we will be great journalists.