Noah Taylor graduated from UT in December 2019 with a degree in journalism.

During his time at Tennessee, he worked as the sports editor at The Daily Beacon, which helped him land a job as the sports editor of the LaFollette Press.

“My favorite part of the job would definitely be the writing,” Taylor said. “I know that’s kind of a lame answer, but I love writing stories.”

Taylor had a background in sports writing for a local SB Nation site before he started at the Beacon in late 2017 before the end of the semester. His writing was closer to a fan’s blog, rather than your more professional sports journalism.

This difference to Taylor caused him to seek out the Beacon with the idea of furthering his professional skills.

Taylor remembers being nervous going into the interview at the Beacon and just hoping to get a sports writing gig.

“I just walked into the Beacon office right before the end of the fall semester, just hoping I could get a job,” Taylor said. “I thought it would be extremely hard to get a job there. But I just walked in and got offered one after just a few minutes.”

Taylor started on the track and field beat, where his work ethic and willingness to do whatever was put in front of him was noticed, and by February, he had been promoted to the softball beat. Taylor was a huge fan of SEC softball, so the exceptional work he did on the beat came easy to him.

Taylor moved up the ranks of the Beacon, covering more popular sports like soccer and women’s basketball, before applying for and landing the job of sports editor. With that came more responsibilities, but also the reward of the football beat — something the diehard SEC football fan was looking forward to.

Covering football as the sports editor, Taylor got several incredible opportunities, including the chance to appear on the Paul Finebaum Show ahead of a Tennessee football game. Finebaum is a college football commentator for ESPN and the SEC Network and also a UT alum. Finebaum worked at the Beacon and even held the sports editor title. 

The opportunity to meet a Beacon alum who is a titan in sports media was Taylor’s favorite memory from his time at the Beacon.

Yet for all the amazing experiences Taylor had at the Beacon, it was only half the battle; he would still need a job in the real world. He constantly looked for jobs during his time at UT, knowing he could handle the responsibilities of a full-time job and his school work.

Taylor came across an ad for the sports editor position at The LaFollette Press, but he was unsure if he should take it at the time. It took encouragement from Lisa Gary, a journalism professor at UT, to convince Taylor that the Press was the right job for him.

“It was actually (Gary’s) advice,” Taylor said. “She had mentioned it to me, and that was good enough to go after it for me. I thought since she said it, that was reason enough to take the job.”

Taylor landed the job at the Press. He started in December 2019, and his first days were spent covering the local high school basketball tournaments around Christmas. He covered 12 games in three days, but the experience with meeting the coaches and becoming familiar with the area was invaluable to Taylor.

Of course, his experiences wouldn’t stay normal for long. The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into everybody’s system, including the local journalism world. It created challenges for reporting, as local sports shut down, but also a chance for Taylor to branch out. He covered local news, from county commission meetings to elections, and it helped him grow as a writer.

Taylor called the willingness to work hard and do whatever needs to be done one of the most important qualities of a good journalist. Writing and interviewing skills can be taught, but that passion that good journalists have, for whatever is assignment is given to them, is truly important to Taylor.

He detailed an experience he had covering the Tennessee-Florida basketball game in March one day, and then covering an elementary basketball tournament in Jellico the next day. Though those two events are vastly different, Taylor said it is still important to treat everything the same, to not cut corners and cheat yourself out of an experience.

“Everything I cover, I want to give that same type of coverage, and that same energy and passion that I gave to Tennessee basketball,” Taylor said. “That’s a big part of it. I think that’s helped me be successful in this field, viewing every opportunity as the same.”

That belief extends from his experiences in local media, covering both Jellico and Campbell high schools and about eight middle schools. It is a very different experience in covering those sports versus college athletics at the Beacon. There is more Taylor has to do himself, from keeping his own stats to taking his own pictures. And he is the only one to ask questions in interviews, where at UT there is not the pressure to ask a question since there are many reporters covering one event.

But the biggest difference for Taylor — and it’s his favorite part about his job — is the creativity he gets to have in his writing. 

In covering mainly high school sports in a small area like Lafollette, Taylor is the only one that can tell those stories. He gets to decide, with the help of his editors, what is worthy of a story, and how to creatively tell those stories. To Taylor, it is rewarding to be the one to share someone’s thoughts or experiences that otherwise wouldn’t be heard.

And it all connects back to his time at UT and at the Beacon. Taylor can tell these stories, because his experiences in the past, like writing feature stories for Gary’s class, or covering track and field, have helped him grow as a professional. And that was the same message he gave to aspiring journalists.

“Be willing to do anything,” Taylor said. “That first day in the journalism class, a lot of guys say they want to work at ESPN or Barstool. And those are great goals to have. But a lot of those guys would work at the Beacon and then quit when you gave them the track beat. They weren’t willing to cover high school or middle school sports. But I think, if you do that, it will pay off for you.”