Every journalist’s career can be chronicled by a series of phone calls with sources. My experience is no different.

There was the time I spoke with Gary Gait while he was golfing in Scottsdale, Arizona, days removed from the Syracuse women’s lacrosse team’s third NCAA title loss. The chats with residents of Lyons, New York, who escaped an ice storm to catch Jim Boeheim’s only NCAA title win. Or the Zoom with a Museum of Modern Art curator who preserved 300,000 baseball cards from a Syracuse local.

Those conversations led to some of my best stories at The Daily Orange. Yet the more I look back on my last four years, other phone calls stand out to me. They weren’t for articles but with the people who make up this publication and my life. They were positive and negative, forever influencing my time inside and outside of 230 Euclid.

One of the most important calls was almost a year before college. Immediately after getting rejected from Northwestern, I Facetimed Roshan Fernandez, my old boss at our high school publication and then an assistant digital editor at The D.O.

I knew nothing about Syracuse other than it was 3,000 miles away from home, but Roshan assured me that The D.O. was the best place in the country to write about sports. In February, while he was at Sadler Dining Hall with his roommates, I told him I’d been accepted to the school.

Roshan quickly introduced me to the rest of The D.O. sports team. I called sports editor Andrew Crane, who added the “current high school senior” to a Sunday Night Email and invited me to a Zoom with D.O. alum Mark Medina. I called KJ Edelman, who talked to me for an hour and nicely encouraged me based on my crappy high school clips.

They weren’t weirded out by the eager soon-to-be freshman. They made me feel at home months before a torrential downpour and a pack of N95 masks greeted me at Syracuse University.

The calls with those three continued once I officially arrived on campus. Crane tore apart my first story on Zoom while I sat in the Day Hall lounge. Roshan offered me the assistant sports editor position in the spring. KJ explained why my first guide story was entirely cliché. (It was.)

Midway through my sophomore year, another important call awaited me from Skyler Rivera. I was angry and disappointed after not being chosen as sports editor, believing I was on the fast track to head-ed. Skyler told me I needed more time. She was right. Connor Smith invited me back as an assistant and I grew more that semester than any as a writer and editor.

As sports editor, I started initiating more phone calls. I ran young writers through edits. I explained how they should take notes at a field hockey coverage. I let them know when we were pushing their stories since it needed more reporting.

Last year, I thought all my calls relating to The D.O. were over. But the same week Boeheim retired, I began my job as EIC at The D.O.

As one of the designated “sports guys” at the publication, I was petrified about making the jump to management. I quickly found out that I wasn’t the first to make the unexpected transition, and I called up Mark Cooper, who had been in my shoes more than a decade ago.

Mark and I talked about the usual aspects of the role. The long hours. The way to lead a staff of 30 college students. The mistakes or issues that were bound to come up.

Obviously, that last part sticks out to me now. The long conversation with Kyle Chouinard about taking a column down from the website. The calls with Sophie Szydlik about monitoring our Instagram comments. The calls from Mark Nash whenever I messed up something on the operational side. Or the quick chats with Richard Perrins about what he would’ve done if the same thing happened when he was EIC a year ago.

The one thing Mark couldn’t have prepared me for was the flurry of calls from having my number on the internet. I won’t forget the call from someone who just wanted to see the schedule in our lacrosse guide. The one from spring break from an excited former professor having his 90th birthday party at SU. Or the countless ones from people who simply had something important to share.

Now, I won’t receive calls from editors about how I can improve. I won’t call writers to suggest how they can make their next story better. I won’t receive calls from the broader Syracuse community with a story pitch. I won’t call Kyle to hear his idea for the next front-page story.

Now, the constant buzz of my phone will be silent. But the conversations from the last four years will always stay with me.

Anish Vasudevan was the editor-in-chief for The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at anish.sujeet@gmail.com and on X @anish_vasu.

Published on May 2, 2024 at 10:42 am