When most people think of South Bend, they think of it as your typical midwestern community - a good place to settle down and raise a family.  It is a town without all the hustle and bustle of the big cities, yet all of the modern conveniences that we’ve all become accustom to.  While that is an accurate statement, South Bend offers so much more for someone that covers one of the nations more distinguished institutions, someone like Eric Hansen.

“It’s great,” Hansen said of working in the college town of South Bend  “I pretty much cover Notre Dame exclusively. College towns have so much energy and it’s just great having so many people come into town and it being such an important event.”

Growing up in the college town of Columbus, OH, Hansen discovered his love for the collegiate sports world.  However, it was not a lifelong love.  Hansen discovered this love while helping a sibling with a school project while attending Ohio State University.

“My older sister went to Ohio State as well, and she was a broadcast journalism major and needed some help on a sports project,” Hansen recalled.” I helped her with it and it was one of those things where the light bulb kind of went on.  So I took some journalism classes and sure enough, it was something that I fell in love with.  But I didn’t grow up wanting to do this. I started out as a business major and found out that I still didn’t like accounting or economics. It was just something that happened while I was in college.”

Hansen got his start while in college working for a local newspaper. It was the start to what has been a very rewarding and exciting career thus far.

“For the school paper I was actually the police reporter,” Hansen said.” I worked at a paper called the Columbus Citizen Journal, which is no longer in business, and I covered high school sports and boxing part time for them while I was a college student.”

With anything in life, whether it is your career or a certain period in your life, there are always pros and cons. And if you’re a passionate about what you are doing, you will always find positive things that motivate and drive you.  You may also learn something’s that you can pass onto others in your life.  Eric Hansen exemplifies this in his work.

 “I like deadlines, believe it or not,” Hansen remarked. “I always played sports growing up, and I liked having the clock run and having to do things quickly at the last minute. So to me, it’s almost like a game, and I enjoy having that deadline. It makes you feel good when you meet that deadline and do your best work.

The Columbus native also enjoys the interaction he has with so many different people from so many different walks of life.  Not only does he try to learn the rhyme and reason of sport, but also the individuals behind the sport and what makes them tick.  And he takes that information and those experiences, and applies it to his own life.

“I like dealing with the personalities and learning about the people,” Hansen said of the opportunities that his career affords him. “It really helps me in my life as a person and as a father.   For example, there are things I learn from Notre Dame players that are considering transferring. Then when it comes up in my sons life, it’s easier for me because I’ve seen it so many times and I can give them some good advice on that.”

Even with such a great opportunity as covering the University of Notre Dames outstanding athletic programs and its historic football team, there are some drawbacks. Not too many however as the Irish beat writer would point out.

“A lot of editors say that we need the short quick 10-inch read. I think you need some of that, but I think you also need stories with depth,” Hansen said. “People can get the short 10-inch read on the internet.  They can’t get the depth that a beat writer can give them, and I think that’s important.”

Hansen also mentioned the profound effect that the Internet has had on the field of journalism.  He feels that it has given so many people unbelievable opportunities, and has broadened the horizon for everyone involved.

“From the standpoint of newspapers being on the Internet, I think it’s great,” Hansen said about the opportunity of being published worldwide. “The fact that it impacts so many people has changed us from being a regional paper to a national presence. And the fact that we’re more national now has afforded me some opportunities. I’ve written a couple books now. The first book was called Notre Dame Stadium Stories and it came out last fall. It was not another Notre Dame history book. I tried to focus on people and dynamics rather than the stats and things like that. The one that came out earlier this month is called, Notre Dame Where Have You Gone? And it’s a collection of where are they now  stories on former Notre Dame players.”

Hansen also added that not only has the internet become a great source of information for everyone, but that it also gives his readers an opportunity to express their views to him and his fellow colleagues.

“It’s  a great resource to look things up. Also, you  get so much more feedback on your articles. During the coaching search, our stories got almost a million hits on the South Bend Tribune website.” 

With the good, you’re unfortunately going to find the bad as well. And Hansen feels that with some of the newer forms of interaction and information on the Internet, the bad is often spotlighted more than it should be.

“I think some of the blogs and message boards are kind of fun,” Hansen said. “I also think some of them are really bad. I think you have a lot of amateur people that don’t know about liability laws and ethics. There are people with degrees that have problems with that too. There is more a proliferation of that, and I noticed especially during things like coaching searches and recruiting that you really get the muck of what’s out there coming to the surface, and I don’t like that.”

Working in the rich and exciting community of Notre Dame has been more than rewarding, but Eric Hansen continues to set goals for himself professionally, and one day would relish the opportunity to write for a national publication.

“I’d like to work in a bigger market just to see what it is like, or cover college sports for a national magazine,” said Hansen of his ideal job.  “I think it would be a lot of fun to be able to travel a little bit and take a lot of time to write the longer pieces. Having written long chapters for books, I now know that I could do those longer pieces.”

Throughout his career, Eric Hansen has been able to cover some of the more memorable people and times in the world of collegiate athletics. One of the more memorable stories was the George O’Leary debacle.

“When George O’Leary resigned after four or five days and then Notre Dame ended up with Tyrone Willingham, that was real interesting just because the ebb and flow of it all, Hansen recalled.

“Someone mentioned to me the day that the story broke that there were inaccuracies in his bio in the media guide.  I’ve seen that a million times. A lot of those sports information departments are kind of careless. They have kids that are still learning and don’t check real well before they put those types of things  in there, so I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think that was going to blow up the way it did, I misread that one.”

Eric Hansen can be read online at www.southbendtribune.com/sports/