PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Terry Toohey has been working for the Delaware County Daily Times since 1981 and is one of the area’s top sports writers.
Toohey joined KYW Newsradio’s Matt Leon in a conversation about what it's like as a sportswriter and his long journey in the journalism realm.
While in high school, one of Toohey’s teachers suggested he might have a career in writing, but Toohey did not “get the bug” for it until being enrolled at the Community College of Philadelphia, he said.
He recalls a friend, who was the sports editor at Vanguard at the time, asking if he was interested in writing.
“I said sure, and that's kind of how it all started.”
He landed his first journalism job at the Philadelphia Inquirer and spent his first two years there answering phone calls and “taking results.”
It wasn’t until his third year that he began working on assignments – covering a catholic league baseball playoff game was one of his firsts.
He said the more he did it, the more he enjoyed it.
“It took me a while to become a better writer. And you're always as a writer, you're always improving, you always want to improve.”