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MU J-School alumn talks new role as voice of Kansas City Monarchs

Carter Woodiel in the booth when he was with the Sioux Falls Canaries in the 2020 season.
Erin Bormett / Argus Leader
/
USA TODAY NETWORK
Carter Woodiel in the booth when he was with the Sioux Falls Canaries in the 2020 season.

After graduating from the University of Missouri in 2018 with a Bachelor's in Broadcast Journalism, Carter Woodiel worked various broadcast jobs for collegiate sports teams. Soon, he'll move to Kansas City to work for the Kansas City Monarchs.

Carter reflected on his time at the University of Missouri with KBIA reporter Shea Baechle.

Carter: So I have a couple of jobs right now, but the main one is I'm the Senior Director of broadcasting and media relations with the Kansas City Monarchs baseball team. And I'm also working as a play-by-play broadcaster with the University of South Dakota for our women's basketball team through the end of the season, and then at the end of the year I'll be moving to KC.

Baechle: Can you tell me about the journalism you’ve done, because you did not originally go into broadcast.

Carter: I got into KBIA, originally I went to Mizzou and all my friends were going to KOMU to do TV, which, as I'm sure you know, is a stressful experience and very rewarding if you're a KOMU person. And I sort of felt like okay, I guess that's what I'll do, because that's what all my friends are doing. I bumped into Ryan at the NBA awards. KCOU was up for a play-by-play award and we kind of were able to connect there and he sat me down. I think it was like a week before classes started if I remember correctly. And basically he sat me down and was like, Carter, if you want to you don't have to do TV, you can just work here with us in radio. I'm like, well these people seem a lot more chill and I know that I'm really passionate about radio, you know, beyond just sports I'm passionate about radio itself. That was a really great decision. And so that was where I where I got my degree, and where I worked journalistically, and just had an awesome time and Ryan's a great guy.

Baechle: And which part of your journalism career up to this point has been the most long lasting impact on you?

Carter: It's hard to say because I've always I built myself as a Swiss army knife, that's kind of what I call myself. My last two jobs in baseball have really been built on my ability to do a little bit of everything to be able to interview call games, edits, put graphics together. One thing obviously, I cut my teeth at KCOU for play-by-play that was extremely exciting. KBIA fostered my passion for radio and also put my writing skills to work, which is so important because obviously you need to be a great writer at any level, at anything you're doing in this industry. And then I also worked at Newsy for two and a half years. It's called Scripps News now, but I worked there for two and a half years while I was in college. And so that was where I did all of my on camera stuff where I learned how to anchor on camera, where I learned how to edit videos on a deadline. I think the biggest thing for my time at Mizzou that I'm thankful for is my ability to write, and you know this, you can't graduate from Mizzou’s journalism school if you don't know how to write.

Baechle: Is sports journalism a whole ‘nother ball park, so to speak, compared to regular journalism?

Carter: I'm a PR guy, you know, I'm working with journalists, I'm trying to get more people to be aware of our team and get the word out there. But when I was working in, in on the journalism side, you know, this is something we talked a lot about when I was developing is how you have to apply the same ethics and standards and techniques and et cetera, when you are covering sports, if you want to do it well. And so I think, and I think also, you know, sports is a reflection of society at large, right, there's always things you know, a lot of people say, Oh, we got to stick to sports and keep other things out of it. But the reality is, you know, America, like it or not, is a country that is obsessed with sports. And it means that everything else about America gets thrown in with sports all the time and so that makes it a really interesting subject. So there's a lot of overlap. It's really exciting. This is the kind of job that I was hoping I would have sort of at this stage in my career and it's a job that two years ago I don't know- I didn't know how I would have gotten here so I'm really glad that it worked out.