Q:How do you balance your time between writing and editing the TODAY show, managing the Shore Sports Network and your personal life?

A: “I’ll be honest, it can be very difficult. My wife and I don’t have children yet but are looking to start a family, so time will soon be at even more of a premium. There are weekdays when I essentially work from 6:30 a.m. to about 11 p.m. with only a short break in between because my NBC shift goes from 6:30 to 3 p.m. and then if there are athletic events after school or later in the evening that I am covering, that takes up the rest of the day. I am lucky in that my wife is the athletic trainer at Raritan High School so we have a similar schedule in that she is often working in the afternoon or night because of her sports teams. I also frequently work on Saturdays and occasionally on Sundays, so we do our best to try to fit in time with each other when we can. It can be a strain, though, and I have tried in recent years to assume more of a managerial role at Shore Sports Network so that I don’t have to be traveling to so many events during the week. There is going to come a time when I just can’t do both jobs any more, which will most likely mean giving up the high school sports coverage.”

Q: Besides sports, are there other topics you enjoy writing about for the TODAY show?

A: “I definitely enjoy the human interest stories, whether it’s someone battling a grave illness with a smile or persevering through a difficult situation. I also like the pop culture pieces where I get to use a little bit more of my sense of humor than in my normal writing. It helps just to be able to branch out into different types of writing to get a feel for each one. That can only help me if I look to work for other types of entertainment-related sites or publications.”

Q: What class at Northwestern did you benefit the most from in pursuit of your journalism career?

A: “I took an investigative journalism class as a senior that was beneficial when it came to researching stories, accessing public records and learning other ways of finding information. I’m old enough that this was before Google, so it taught me some old-school methods of how to dig up information. Also, my editing class as a freshman was crucial for me to just get a good foundation and get down the fundamentals. You would be surprised how many reporters out there don’t have an innate grasp of certain stylistic or grammatical elements. Another crucial part of my development from Northwestern was my internship as a junior. I was sent to live in Michigan and work for The Ann Arbor News for three months. They treated me like a regular reporter and editor, and it really gave me a glimpse into a professional newsroom. I covered a wide variety of stories; a raging house fire, kids going crazy over Beanie Babies at a toy store, court cases, an investigation of the University of Michigan men’s basketball team, the Fab Five and recruiting violations. It was a great learning experience.”

Q: Do you have a favorite sport that you cover?

A: “Basketball was always my main sport growing up, and I played all through high school and on the club team at Northwestern, but in my professional life, football has really grown on me. The Shore Conference has some tremendous football programs and great atmospheres at many of the games, so I would say football by a small margin over basketball, which I still love to cover.”

Q: Have you ever been recognized in public? if so when was the first time?

A: “Yes, but mainly during events that I am covering, and that started years ago in the mid-2000s. I’ve had a few student sections chant my name or make big cardboard cutouts of my head, which is completely surreal and usually just makes me laugh because it all seems so ridiculous to me. It doesn’t happen as often in my personal life outside of the games, but it has happened. I’ve had former Shore athletes recognize me in bars and buy me a drink, and it’s happened in other places when I have been out to eat with my wife. Social media has made things a little more uncomfortable sometimes because have had numerous people take pictures of me from the stands and send them to me, and a few times when I’ve been out in public I could tell someone was trying to secretly take a picture rather than just coming up and saying hello. The “picture sneaking” actually happened ion 2010 when I was with my mom at a limo company in Matawan arranging the limousine for my wedding. Three kids yelled my name out of a passing car as the limo employee looked at me like, ‘Who are you?’ and my mom just shook her head.”

Q: Do you have aspirations beyond your current position with TODAY? Or is there another field of Journalism you are interested in experiencing?

A: “Yes, my next goal is to branch out and do way more freelancing for large publications. I have written for Sports Illustrated’s website, SI.com, and also for Yahoo! Sports. I would like to do more with them and also branch out to entities like Rolling Stone, GQ, Grantland, ESPN the Magazine, The New Yorker, New York magazine, Outside, and more. I know it won’t be easy, but I plan on chipping away until I can really break into some of those high-level publications and try to reach my full potential, especially after selling All Shore Media to Townsquare Media, which owns Shore Sports Network, this past May. My goal with that company was to build it up from scratch and sell it for a good-sized amount of money so that I could pursue these other goals. I accomplished that, so I’m trying to work toward the next stage of my career.”

Q: Do you feel like the most intriguing articles you write come from negative news like the Alex Malarkey\ Fail Mary article, or positive news?

A: “People tend to fixate on the negative news and the controversial topics, but from what I’ve learned writing for TODAY.com and even with the sports stories, the uplifting ones usually do really well, especially now when everyone passes them around on Facebook and other social media. People seem to enjoy positive stories because they are often bombarded with the negative ones on TV news and online. Those type of stories are really what the TODAY Show brand is all about, and there has been a big push for them because TODAY has such a huge Facebook audience of 4 million-plus followers. In the high school realm, we usually stick to mainly positive stories unless it’s one that just can’t be ignored like the Sayreville football scandal.”

Stump commented on the public’s attitude toward high school athletes in general, “When people are too critical at the high school level, I try to remind them that these are just teenagers playing the game for free, not college athletes on a full ride or pros getting paid.”

I’d like to thank Scott Stump for being generous with his time and responses.