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What do you do?
The State is a 120,000-circulation daily, the largest in South Carolina. Its main focuses are state government (Columbia is the state capital) and the University of South Carolina (located in Columbia as well). I edit sports stories for style, grammar, spelling, accuracy and the like. I design and proof sports pages. I generally just do whatever it takes to get the sports section done every night.

How did you get your job?
A friend I worked with at another paper told me about an opening here. I applied, and luckily my clips were strong enough that they hired me.

What makes you good at your job?
Attention to detail, a maniacal desire to check every fact twice for accuracy, keeping one eye on the clock and experience.

What are you currently working on?
I mostly work on the inside pages of the paper. I'm getting a good dose of our daily baseball page now, formatting box scores and compiling the roundups and notes.

Best professional lesson learned at the J-School?
Never give up on a story because as soon as you do, you're likely to get scooped by the competition.

What would be your best advice to current students?
Do as many different things in your sequence as possible, because you never know what you'll end up doing when you hit the "real world."

What has been your greatest professional achievement?
Well, I have a couple of S.C. Press Association design awards. Personally, I'm most proud of being the section editor for a two-part, 64-page high school football tab at my former paper, the Anderson Independent-Mail.

Where would you most like to work and why?
I'd love to work at one of the metros in Chicago, merely because I have this sick obsession with the Chicago Cubs and I would love to be able to work on that type of intense baseball coverage on a daily basis.

What is the one thing you wish you had done?
I wish I would have taken Graphics of Journalism instead of a features-writing class, only because it would have helped me in my current job.

What are your next career steps?
At some point in my career I'll either be an assistant sports editor, supervising the desk at a paper somewhere, or I'll drop this copyediting thing and go back to writing, probably some kind of baseball beat if I can find one.

What is something about you that may surprise people?
I spend most of my free time merely watching baseball games on TV, and will do that for days without a care in the world.