Meet the 2020 Award Winners: Illinois Sportswriter of the Year, Shannon Ryan

Shannon Ryan is a sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune and the 2020 NSMA Illinois Sportswriter of the Year.

Recently, NSMA intern Sahil Dhawan chatted with Ryan.

Sahil Dhawan: What was your career path like on your way to where you are now? Did you always know you wanted to be a part of the sports media industry?

Shannon Ryan: Yeh, growing up I just always loved sports and I always loved writing and even creative writing, so then, when you get into high school, you do more of that. And then when you get into college, I covered a lot of Notre Dame sports and Notre Dame football, and kind of saw people from the Chicago Tribune coming and covering those, and thought, "that'd be really cool."

And then after college at St. Mary's College in Indiana, I went to the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was a great place to start. I covered high school sports, but like Chicago, it's a city that really loves its sports, obsesses over them, it's like a religion to them. People really care about what you're writing and they let you know. So it was a great place to start out. And I came to Chicago after eight years in Philadelphia.

To see and hear the entire interview, click here.