From left: Keeler McJunkin, Emma Decker, Dillon Vibes, Isaac Gibson, Zac Neel, Hannah Bonnie, Romaine Soh, Lori Shontz, Kylee O’Connor.
The SOJC Track Bureau is comprised of University of Oregon student journalists who cover major events at Hayward Field. The 12,000-seat venue, a five-minute walk from our home in Allen Hall, is home to some of the world’s most prestigious track and field competitions, including the Prefontaine Classic, the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships; the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials and the 2021 IAAF World Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
Directed by senior instructor Lori Shontz, students have filed nearly 600 deadline stories since the bureau opened in 2015. Their work is routinely published in professional outlets across the United States, both for major national news organizations and for smaller local publications, which reflects our belief in the importance of local news:
- We are providing daily coverage of the 2019 IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Doha, Qatar, for the (Portland) Oregonian and The (Eugene) Register-Guard.
- At the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials, we published 44 stories about hometown athletes for 17 professional publications, including recurring coverage for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi; The Tampa Bay Times and the Arizona Republic.
- Our annual clients for the NCAA championships include 406 Montana Sports; the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine; the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass.; the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel; the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel; and the Press and Dakotan in Yankton, S.D.
- We wrote stories from the 2015 USATF outdoor national championships for outlets ranging from The Billings (Mont.) Gazette to The Miami Herald to Runner’s World Online.
- One of my Reporting II classes, which was focused on sports journalism, covered the 2016 USATF indoor national championships for the KVAL.com, a television website in Eugene.
- All told, we have published 138 stories for 37 professional outlets; 31 of those outlets have paid the students as freelancers.
About the bureau chief
Lori Shontz spent more than two decades as an award-winning professional journalist, writing about everything from Little League baseball to the World Series for the Progress-Index in Petersburg, Va.; The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; The Miami Herald and The Penn Stater alumni magazine.
She covered the 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002 Olympics for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and directed coverage of the 2004 and 2008 Games as an editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Miami Herald, respectively.
She founded the SOJC Track Bureau shortly after arriving at the University of Oregon for the 2014-15 academic year. In 2018, she was honored as one of the top 20 innovators in U.S. journalism education by MediaShift, and she is a member of the Provost’s Teaching Academy at the University of Oregon.
Track class in the news
Remix: How to teach journalism in the press box. MediaShift, January 2017
UO journalism students train at the Olympic Trials. KVAL, July 2016
Advanced sports reporting: Olympic trials edition. Around the O, July 2016