Alexander Hero died suddenly on Thanksgiving Day, 2014. He is survived by his parents, Byron and Camille, and sister, Gabrielle. Born March 10, 1991, he was a 2010 graduate of The Hill School, where he was President of the School, winner of the Award for Excellence in Leadership, and Captain of the Varsity Soccer and Baseball teams. He graduated from Amherst College in 2014, where he majored in religion and helped lead the Amherst baseball team to four record-setting seasons.
Alexander’s life was defined by emotion. He was passionate about sports, fought for fairness and railed against injustice, cherished his many friends and teammates, and, most of all, was lovingly devoted to his father, mother and sister.
We are publishing Alex's journalism school application essay below to give you a sense of the passionate, exhuberant person he was.
What led you to your interest in journalism? What experience, if any, do you have in journalism? What do you hope to gain through your work at the Graduate School of Journalism?
I love sports, but I am not applying to Columbia Journalism School to become a sports reporter. I want to be a journalist who uses sports to communicate with people about broader issues. Sports and sports journalism have untapped potential to mobilize people politically and shape public policy debates. I want to use sports journalism in a way that few have, as a catalyst for social change.
In 2004 and 2008 more Americans watched the Super Bowl than voted in the Presidential election. In 2010, 46 percent of the world watched the World Cup. In an age when twice as many people watch Monday Night Football as watch NBC nightly news and politicians and corporate CEOs capitalize on apathy and ignorance, journalists fight a seemingly Sisyphean battle to inform the public. Popular interest in the news is waning, and journalists must find new ways to expose an increasingly ambivalent public to serious issues. I believe sports can be a tool to do so. Sports have the power, as a medium, to make these issues more compelling, allowing journalists to reach people newspapers and news programs cannot. I hope to use sports to comment on social, economic and political issues, encouraging a larger audience to look at the world in a new way.
One can trace the colonial path of the British Empire using the games it left behind. Few events better define World War I as a conflict of governments not people than a soccer game between British and German troops on a blood-soaked battlefield on Christmas Day in 1914. Any portrayal of the American civil rights movement must include a baseball game played at Ebbets field in Brooklyn, on April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Dodgers… Nelson Mandela’s enthusiastic embrace of South Africa’s traditionally white national rugby team assuaged white fears and helped unite a nation. Years later, he said: “Sport has the power to change the world… It is more powerful than government in breaking down racial barriers.”
This year, during a soccer match in Barcelona, a center of the Catalan independence movement, fans threw bananas at dark-skinned defender Dani Alves. In Rome, right-wing supporters of the soccer team Lazio unveiled 100-foot-high banners that read: "Auschwitz is your town, the ovens are your houses" and "Squad of blacks, terrace of Jews." These incidents could and should have been used to engage millions of soccer fans in a discussion about Europe’s continuing racism and anti-Semitism. When Ann Coulter published an essay blaming soccer and the New York Times’ coverage of the World Cup for America’s supposed moral decay, incisive sports journalism could and should have focused on the role of xenophobia in our evolving national identity, especially as to our huge population of Latino immigrants, who are among the country’s biggest soccer fans. When the rapidly expanding KHL poached NHL superstar Ilya Kovalchuk, sports journalism could have contextualized Russia’s wealth disparities and expansionist ambitions using Putin’s Oligarch-funded hockey league.
The lack of diversity in ownership positions throughout the sports industry makes white privilege obvious to all. Public officials’ consistent willingness to build new stadiums for billionaire owners with taxpayer money offers myriad case studies of irresponsible government spending…
…Because they were well-known professional athletes, NFL running back Ray Rice’s domestic violence incident and NBA forward Jason Collins’ coming out as gay brought a unique type of national attention to these issues…
State briefly your objective in pursuing a graduate education in journalism and, so far as you can tell, what you hope to do after graduation.
America was founded, in part, on the idea that an active, well-informed citizenry can lead a nation to prosperity. Yet Americans are less informed today about major social and political issues than they were when news traveled by town crier and pamphlets. Apathy, ambivalence and attention deficit reign, and modern journalists struggle to keep the public even moderately informed. The internet has become the world’s greatest purveyor of misinformation. A rising tide of anti-education and anti-intellectual sentiment threatens to engulf our country.
More and more Americans get their “news” from the Daily Show and its satirical cousins. The most popular fact-based television show is not a newscast, but BBC’s Top Gear, an automotive program that uses cars to comment on contemporary issues. Through comedy and cars, these two shows reach viewers who would not watch the evening news, read an op-ed, or peruse a lengthy “think piece” in a magazine. I hope to use an innovative approach to sports journalism to achieve the same break-through, connecting with a broad audience about major social and political issues by connecting those issues to the world of sports that has this audience’s attention…
In a short autobiographical essay, tell us about yourself. You can write about your family, your education, your talents or your passions; about significant places or events in your life; about books you have read, people you have met or work you’ve done that has shaped the person you have become. Our only requirements are that the essay be informative, well written and reflective of your own voice; our only cautions are that you avoid poetry, purple prose or writing about yourself in the third person
Minute Maid Park’s press box is supposed to be a quiet place. Conceived as a quiet workspace for media members, it is anything but. Without windows to serve as a buffer, the open-air room is exposed to the boisterous caldron of humanity surrounding it. Even from my seat in the back row, I am privy to every heated conversation, drunken diatribe and sexist cat-call. The crowd’s cheers, jeers, and protestations reverberate throughout the space. When the noise crescendos, the writers, unable to work, push their chairs back and become spectators. In between pitches, music blasts from thousands of industrial-sized speakers. An aroma of beer, vomit, and hotdogs fills the air.
In front of me sits public address announcer Bob Ford. His voice reminds me of Howard Cosell’s, but with a touch of Texas twang, after two shots of cheap whiskey. Throughout the game he darts in and out of the room, almost manic, fetching nachos and diet cokes. He always returns just in time to announce the next batter.
To my right sits Rick Blount, MLB’s official scorer, the man who distinguishes hits from errors. Tonight, after weeks of watching me score games incorrectly, he has decided to give me a lesson. Between tips, he laments the sluggish pace of play: “I get paid by the game,” he says, “I’m just rooting for it to be over.” Technically, as a team employee, I am not allowed to question his decisions. Every time there is a controversial play, however, we argue.
It is the seventh inning stretch, in Texas, so we are serenaded by Moe Bandy’s ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas,’ instead of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame.’ As cowboys and coyotes flash across El Grande, the 6,696 square-foot high definition video board that looms over right field, enthusiastic fans clap vigorously to the beat. The writers groan. I cannot help smile.
I love it here. My mother and Uncle were professional athletes, so sports are in my blood. This ballpark, sixteen hundred miles away from my New York apartment, feels like home. Sports have brought me joy and pain, both as an athlete and a fan. They have been cathartic and maddening. As much as I love sports, I lament their negative effects on society…
The NCAA, allegedly dedicated to protecting student athletes, oversees a system in which the highest-paid state employee in 39 U.S. states is a college football or basketball coach. It issued Southern Methodist University’s football team the “death penalty” for providing cash and other benefits to low-income student-athletes, but has not penalized The University of North Carolina for 20 years of institutional academic fraud involving at least 3,100 of the university’s scholarship athletes.
FIFA officials are under investigation for accepting bribes in exchange for awarding the 2018 World Cup to Qatar, a state sponsor of terrorism built on slave laborers from Nepal, an estimated 4,000 of whom will die building the necessary stadiums…
Scores matter, but sports must be covered by serious journalists who want to discuss more than the final score and players’ recycled clichés. I want to be a serious journalist who uses the palette of sports to take on issues of corruption, racism, economic inequality, resource allocation, amateurism, and a wide range of other social and political issues. There is room for consideration of those issues amid the endless loop of SportsCenter.
I grew around sports, was a varsity athlete in college, and have worked in the sports industry in several capacities. I have worked hard in the classroom. I have an inquisitive mind, broad interests, and am a critical writer and thinker. With the right training and guidance, I am confident I can bring something new and important to the profession.