Matthew Byrne Awarded First Joan Brew Memorial Scholarship With HoosiersNow.com

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — I take an enormous amount of pride in being a graduate of Indiana University's School of Journalism, and the time I spent in Ernie Pyle Hall from 1976 through 1980 attending classes and working at the Indiana Daily Student were four of the greatest years of my life.

I always wanted to be a sportswriter, and I knew it when I was in the third grade. I loved to write, loved sports and — growing up in Schererville in Northwest Indiana — I had the great fortune of having the best undergraduate journalism school in the country right here in my own home state.

It made it easy for me to go to college after my time at Lake Central High School, having access to IU's journalism school as an in-state student. Just prior to coming to Bloomington, I was in something of a one-income household for a while, and it was on me to pay for school. Thanks to a lot of grants and scholarships, plus a lot of my own hard work during the summers, I made it through without any outside help.

My greatest supporter of this journey was my mom, Joan Brew. She was — and is — my biggest fan and did all she could to make me live my dream and get through college somehow and some way.

My goal when I went to IU was to get a job at a top-10 newspaper when I graduated, and I did that when I got hired at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. She was thrilled for me, even though it was a thousand miles away.

My four-decade career led me back to Bloomington in 2019 when I launched our Sports Illustrated Indiana site with the SI/FanNation group. We're starting Year 5 now, and it's been terrific. HoosiersNow.com is a consistent top-10 college site, and we've added five other sites along the way. We're on pace to do a stunning 100 million pageviews this year.

For me, this has been all about giving back, too. When I started hiring to grow my sites with Sports Illustrated/FanNation, the goal was always to give back to my alma mater. Whenever I could, I hired graduates from Indiana's new Media School, and that's really made me happy. Dylan Wallace, Haley Jordan, D.J. Fezler, Jack Ankony, Ben Stinar and Becky Rigel — all proud IU grads – have helped me grow my business to amazing levels.

During all my time in Bloomington, my mom — who's watched every Indiana basketball game for the past 50 years — was thrilled to watch me enjoy being back in Bloomington. She's 91 now, and still reads everything. She loves her Hoosiers.

So it made total sense to me to include my Mom when I decided to add another link to young journalists from Indiana. Business is good, so I am funding a new fall internship at HoosiersNow.com and it goes to a qualified writer who's a student at IU. Unlike many of my competitors, I believe in paying the students who work for me, so the scholarship — which runs through the fall semester of 2023 — pays $4,000 for the work that Matthew will get done.

The plan is to do this every fall, when there's a lot going on in Bloomington and the intern can have a great writing experience. So here's the announcement on the first winner of the Joan Brew Memorial Scholarship.

I am very happy to announce the first winner is Matthew Byrne. He's a senior at Indiana, a native of Ridgewood, N.J. He's already done a lot of great things at Indiana, writing about soccer and baseball and more. He's very talented and we're thrilled to have him join our team.

I've always wanted to cover Indiana's men's soccer program — the eight-time national champions — on a full-time basis, but we've never had a large enough staff to do it other than the COVID year when they played in the spring.

This fall, we're going to do it. Matthew has covered IU soccer before and he's excited to do it again for us. He'll also help a bit with football and dive in to assist our top-notch coverage of basketball — both men's and women's — later in the semester. He'll be a nice addition to our staff with Jack Ankony, who's in his second year with us, and Daniel OIinger, who joined our team on July 1.

"I am honored to receive this scholarship and join the talented and expanding HoosiersNow staff,'' Byrne said. "Like baseball, I love how soccer is so meticulous — the anticipated buildup, the strike, the hard-fought jubilation. I hope to share that passion with readers and aim to supply the stories to keep you updated with this year's team."

Go ahead and follow Matthew now. You can read all of his stuff and follow him on Facebook and Twitter, and we'll post all of our stories on our Facebook fan page as well. To like our HoosiersNow Facebook page, CLICK HERE.

His first day is Monday, Aug. 7. Please welcome him to our family.