Introduction

“My name is Bailey Jackson I’m a sports content creator/sports reporter. A lot of what I do is in the digital space social media such as Instagram and TikTok would be my two biggest platforms but I also do a lot on threads as a partner with Meta and Facebook. I’m not a huge Twitter person but I do have a Twitter account.

A little bit about me, I was born and raised in Indianapolis right outside the city in a suburb called Carmel. I spent all my life there up until I went to college at Indiana University, which is about an hour or an hour and a half away from where I lived and went to high school. Once I got there I decided to study marketing. I came to IU intending to go to business school and I never really thought too much about working in the sports space, not sports media once I got to IU.

I came at a really interesting time it was like one of the best rookie classes that the basketball team had in years. IU basketball specifically is just huge it is a huge culture with a lot of history behind the team and the program that I didn’t understand until I got there. I embraced it and got interested in player’s profiles and from there learned about players from other teams whether that be IU, Ohio St, Alabama, or even at a professional level so that’s what got me interested in sports.

I started in basketball working with the showcase agent in Indianapolis called Prep Ball Stars and from there I came back to IU and started doing some sideline reporting for the Big 10 network my sophomore year covering the wrestling team there then Covid hit. Unfortunately, a lot of those opportunities were limited if they even existed at all. I pivoted my approach. I still knew I wanted to gain experience working in the sports industry and continue to work in sports somehow and that is where I found an interest in doing social media and started working with an agency called Athletes First. Specifically, they are a house production company called Goat Farm Media and were doing social media content for NFL athletes that were signed to them such as Tua Tagovailoa, Aaron Rogers, Jalen Ramsey, CJ Stroud, and Justin Fields. It was a cool opportunity for someone who graduated in 2022.”

Question 1: What made you want to get into sports? And out of every professional sport which one is your favorite?

“I grew up playing sports, pretty much everything you can think of. I guess that’s where my interest in sports first developed. Additionally, my dad was a big influence – he always had ESPN or FS1 on, whether it was a talk show, First Take, 30 for 30, Outside the Lines, or one of my favorites, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. Sports shows were always playing in the background. I think these two things significantly influenced me early in life. I never quite understood it until I started working in the sports field. I always wondered where my love and interest in sports came from. I guess the moment I knew I wanted to work in sports was in college. When it comes to my favorite professional sports, I always break it up into 3 categories: I like covering football, I enjoy watching basketball, and I like playing golf”.

Question 2: What NBA players did you meet? Which one did you love interviewing the most?

“I’ve met so far! Kat and Brandon Miller are two of my favorites.”

Question 3: How blessed are you to have a voice/platform where you can share your passion for sports?

“ Very! I never anticipated that my platform would reach the level it has or honestly turned into the business it is and I’m very grateful that people want to hear my opinions or tell a story.”

Question 4: What professional women athletes do you admire? And what do you like about them?

“ Serena Williams, Coco Guaff, Cheyenne Woods, Sue Bird, and so many more! I think they’re all great leaders and have done so much for their sport.”

Question 5: What advice would you give to little girls who want to be big influences one day? 

“Nobody cares and Work harder. That’s the motto that got me past some of the “awkward” early phases of reporting/content creation. In my case, I’m a big perfectionist so if something is not exactly how I envision it then I tend to stop trying or give up when it came to building my platform I realized that I was not going to be great from the start and it’s going to take work and repetition to get to where I want to be and while the finished product may not be exactly what I want my audience to see at the end of the day nobody is gonna care that much or notice the little details as I notice them. I just gotta keep pushing.”

Question 6: How would you describe your style of commentary and analysis?

“I don’t know if I have a style. I just like to tell stories the way I’d want them to be told to me and I focus on making it as engaging as possible.”

Question 7: How do you sometimes deal with the hate on your reels?

“I just take it with a grain of salt at the end of the day if people wanna comment something negative it’s still engagement and it’s benefiting my content and its exposure so if anything I welcome it.”

Question 8: How do you measure success? And how blessed are you for the opportunities that you were given?

“Sometimes I measure success by literally looking at metrics but I don’t do that too often if anything I look at success as the number of brand deals I do or the connections I make or the trips I get to go on with that being said I’m very blessed I thank God for what he’s done for my life and hope he continues to bless me.”

Question 9: Who was your big role model for you growing up? And how was your life overall in general? 

“Considering I didn’t get into sports reporting until later in life or towards the beginning of my college experience I wouldn’t say I had like a sports reporting role model growing up if anything I feel like my parents were probably my biggest role models as a kid or my aunt. Now that I am in the sports reporting space I like Taylor Rooks, Joy Taylor, Ashley Nicole Moss, and Treasure Wilson who is a good friend of mine. I think she does an amazing job hosting the show that she is on and also producing and hosting her show. That’s the 4 people specifically that I like in the sports media space.

In terms of life overall, it is great. I wouldn’t change anything about any part of my life from the way I grew up to my adult life It has been good. There’s been some ups and downs, I think everybody’s life has some ebbs and flows but those lows make the highs even better. I enjoyed every part of my life”.

Question 10: What is your purpose or legacy you want to leave on this earth and the world of sports?

“I would say my purpose or what I hope people take away from my content is a new insightful fresh perspective that challenges their thinking or just causes them to think a little harder about a certain situation, sport, player, league, etc. On top of that, I hope I can inspire young women of color to pursue a career in sports. While it’s headed in a really good direction it’s still a field dominated by a lot of old white men and you only see black women reporting on basketball so just inspiring diversity in other historically white spaces.”