PV alumnus pursues journalism in college

A couple of Pascack Valley’s beloved alumni came in for a little reunion with The Smoke Signal staff, and had a little chat with the current staff. One of the former writers for The Smoke Signal, Greg Gottfried, was one of these alumni.

Gottfried is a junior at Indiana University, where he is heavily involved in the newspaper there. He is a radio show host for WIUX, a popular student-ran show on the radio throughout Bloomington, Indiana, which he broadcasts live basketball and soccer games on 99.1 FM. He also writes for the Indiana University newspaper, IDS Weekend as an editor for the section that writes about TV news and additional entertainment. This includes sending out movie, television, and music reviews.

“Kyle Stackpole did the sports,” said Gottfried. “I wrote a lot about entertainment. Movies, television, music, stuff like that. I also worked with Molly [Simio] a lot; she edited my stories and she helped me out.”

Gottfried admitted that he did some basketball recaps while attending PV in which he interviewed Coach Coleman and Coach Koch. Additionally, while he was at PV, he wrote an article about the uprising and overall growth of fantasy football.

Gottfried’s role in college definitely was not the same as his role as a high school student.

In high school, he had a lot of freedom with what he wrote. To him, the high school paper seemed more like a club off to the side to do for fun, even though there definitely was a degree of commitment. On the other hand, college newspaper is a full time commitment which acts as a form of preparation for a full time job in the real world.

“There are different stations, and I go around to each station and work on something there. It’s more of a workshop, where I have specific jobs that I need to get done. I’m there until about 12 am every day. But I still love it,” Gottfried said.

A similarity between his time at IU and PV is that Gottfried has almost always written about the same topic, entertainment, even though he is doing more sophisticated work right now in college.

Gottfried writes reviews and articles on upcoming movies by placing them on a template with designs created by other members of his team. In high school, he did the same work without all of the fancy other shenanigans on the page.

What he remembers most about high school are his friends and the great environment that the building provided. Gottfried also was active in playing basketball, tennis, and cross country for the school at some point in his four years.

“I love hanging with friends, I play basketball a lot….not competitively though, just for fun. Although, I pretty much devoted my life to the paper. Other than that, I watch Netflix a lot. In college, you have to have Netflix. It’s just so relaxing, it takes my mind off other things going on in my life,” Gottfried said.

Gottfried also recently got an internship at Wimbledon, one of the four most famous professional tennis tournaments. It is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, and commonly known as the most prestigious. He will be stationed in London this spring, writing articles and biographies on players.