The two women stood there hugging for several minutes before Dana started to talk again. “OK Al here’s the thing. I know about tennis, and a few other sports, but I don’t really know how to report on them. Al I’m not even sure if I can do this.” Alice just looked over at Dana smiling. “Well Dana I guess it a good thing your best friend is a journalist isn’t it? Dana sit down eat you breakfast and let’s talk about what you need to do, so you will be the best commentator ESPN has ever had.”

What Alice and Dana had decided was that Dana needed to get a list of every tennis player, playing in this tournament, and then she and Alice would research all of them paying more attention to the higher ranked players. Alice suggest Dana find out everything not just about recent tournaments but as far back as she could find information. She knew if Dana came across as not only knowing the game but knowing the players it would give her the appearance of being prepared, plus Alice knew it would help draw in the fans. Fans of famous people be it an actress or a tennis player loved to hear facts about their idols. She pointed out that was why magazines like People, and LA Times sold so well, people couldn’t get enough information about famous people.

Alice helped Dana learn how to gather facts, and organize them so she could pull up what information she needed at the time for each player. Then she suggest that the week of the tournament she would take a week of vacation so she could go with Dana and continue to pull this information up for her as needed. At first Dana told Alice she was doing too much. But Alice convinced her that after she got the job at ESPN she would have an assistant to do this, and since she didn’t have an assistant yet she could be her temporary one. Plus she would get a free trip out of this since Dana would have to pay for everything.

After several weeks Dana thought if she had to read and write down statistics about one more player she was going to scream, she never realized how much work Alice really did put into her research until she had Alice the journalist hovering over her. Alice just continued to remind her it would be worth it after she got the job at ESPN.