WSOC’s DaShawn Brown likes to tell sports stories. As for TV cameras? Well ...
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- WSOC-Channel 9 sports reporter DaShawn Brown prioritizes storytelling, visual reporting.
- Brown’s work ethos: give yourself grace, be authentic and order dessert.
- Career path: UNC, sports reporting, 2‑year hiatus, news reporting, WSOC hire in 2015.
DaShawn Brown loves to tell a story. But the part of her job that requires being on TV every day? She’s kind of neutral about that.
Brown, 40, works as a sports reporter for WSOC-Channel 9 in Charlotte, covering all of the local sports teams and occasionally serving as a fill-in anchor on the news desk. She’s been at WSOC for 10 years, and her greatest thrill on the job doesn’t have anything to do with how she appears on camera.
“It has everything to do with capturing the visuals of the story,” Brown said. “As far as me being on TV? Honestly that part — I won’t say it’s weird, because I’m used to doing it — but that was never the motivation. I love seeing the visuals. Hearing the sounds. I love writing. Really, the whole of storytelling. That’s what I enjoy.”
There’s a story to Brown and her life, too, although she’s not one to trumpet it.
“I love being the conduit,” she said. “I’m on TV, but I don’t take a lot of pictures. If you look at my social media, it’s understated. I enjoy putting other people in the forefront and am very happy to kind of go home and be a turtle.”
Brown describes herself as a professional extrovert and personal introvert, one who takes solace in dance (she took years of ballet lessons) and cooking (with many of her rice and seafood recipes derived from her Gullah Geechee cultural heritage). She grew up on Johns Island, S.C., close to Charleston.
When I asked her what her perfect day would entail, Brown started like this: “Crabs are involved.”
Those weren’t the first three words I expected to hear. She went on: “I’m very simple in that way. My idea of a good time is a family cookout. A crab crack.”
A 2007 graduate of UNC, Brown has now been in the business long enough that, on a day like National Girls & Women in Sports Day, people are prone to ask her for career advice. When I asked, she started with this.
“Learn to give yourself grace,” Brown said. “I started my career in a very small market in Greenville, Miss., 12 hours from home. It was just culturally so different from what I knew. ... But I was allowed to mess up there and grow. And that continues even now on TV. I still make mistakes, but you get to a point where you really have to give yourself grace.
“It doesn’t mean you don’t care,” Brown continued. “You’re still a professional and you’re going to put in the work and do all the things. But, as Aaron Rodgers once said to Bryce Young: ‘Be gentle with yourself.’ This is not always a kind business. It’s subjective. And one person’s idea of greatness doesn’t define whether or not you’re great. So really, you need that internal conversation, of you accepting you.”
WSOC and The Charlotte Observer are news partners, and we often cover the same events. So I have crossed paths with Brown many times. But it is her colleagues who work with her most closely, and they rave about her.
“She is the most talented writer I’ve ever met, and I’ve worked with some incredible anchors, producers and reporters in my career,” said Phil Orban, the sports director at Channel 9. “She’s incredibly compassionate, which allows someone who may not want to open up as deeply as is necessary to tell the story to do so. ... And she never forgets anyone she meets, so she has a deep well of contacts that she can use to source the next great story she’s working on.”
Said Andy Nagele, a photojournalist at Channel 9 who works alongside Brown on many of her assignments: “I always say the two things that are hard to teach are effort and attitude. DaShawn had both, right from the start.”
Another thing she strives for: authenticity. As Brown has grown to be more experienced in the TV business, this has translated into how she prepares for the camera.
“Authenticity has been a huge part of my journey,” Brown said. “But I would wear wigs for a very long time because I was conditioned ... into thinking like my hair had to look like this if I was going to be on TV... That was the industry standard…. No one told me that, but I just didn’t think I could wear my hair naturally curly on TV. It wasn’t the norm. ... But now, I have taken that burden off myself. ... Now I just say: ‘This is who I am.’. ... So for a girl or young lady, I say, whatever makes you unique — in your physical appearance or your speech or your dialect — embrace that. That’s what makes you special.”
Part of what makes Brown special, Orban said, is her talent for writing. Here’s the way she started a 2019 piece about a 14-year-old football player who was initially paralyzed from the neck down after playing in a game:
What happens when something you love takes almost everything?
“Her writing, especially the first track of each of her stories, is always so perfect,” Orban said. “It’s always a quick one-liner that just hooks you. I’m insanely jealous of her writing ability.”
Brown started her career as a sports journalist — that year in Mississippi followed by a year in Savannah. But then she found herself in her mid-20s and out of the business, without a TV contract. “A two-year hiatus,” Brown said. “And not by choice.”
She worked retail. She worked at a golf resort in Kiawah Island, S.C., about 20 miles from where she grew up. All the while Brown was trying to get back into the TV business, and decided to broaden her job search to news reporter positions as well. Eventually, she got a job in Charleston as a news reporter. One of the saddest stories she covered there was the 2015 Charleston church shooting, a hate crime that shook her to the core because she had visited that church numerous times before and knew its pastor.
WSOC hired Brown a few months after that. She arrived in Charlotte in December 2015, as a news reporter in a city that was wild about the Panthers, who were deep into their run to Super Bowl 50. She dabbled in Panthers coverage immediately, but stayed mostly in news while contributing occasional sports stories to the station’s Sunday night’s sports show.
“She would drop a script off at my desk, and it was always an incredible piece about some athlete at some level playing some sport,” Orban said. “It was always beautifully written and researched. But most importantly, she was completely autonomous. I didn’t need to tell her to find a story. She would just seek one out, and turn it into great television.”
Brown slowly migrated back into what is now a full-time sports reporting job, except for the occasional substitute role as a news anchor.
Among her other favorite roles: being the cool aunt with her siblings’ children.
“I am a proud auntie,” Brown said. “I don’t have any children of my own. Not opposed to it; that just hasn’t been my life story yet.”
Brown studied culinary arts in high school for several years and remains a food connoisseur.
“When we are on the road,” said Nagele, the photojournalist, “we often work really long, stressful days. But one of the things we always say is that as long as you get a good meal at the end of it, that’s a good trip. And DaShawn always makes sure she gets dessert. When we go out to eat after a game, she will always look at the dessert menu first.”
Now that I’ve gone over all my notes on Brown, I can coalesce some of her suggestions into a three-pronged life plan I can get behind:
1) Give yourself grace.
2) Be authentic.
3) Make sure to order dessert.
