FROM STRUGGLING ENGLISH STUDENT TO FEARLESS JOURNALIST: MEET AARON ROSE

Written November 2023

In the pulsating heart of downtown Toronto, where the echoes of buzzer beaters and grand slams reverberate throughout the city, it’s important for journalists to have authoritative, unique voices. No sports reporter exemplifies that more than Aaron Rose, Sports Illustrated reporter for the Toronto Raptors and TikTok content creator. Who else, in an article covering a 16-point fourth quarter comeback win, would say the Raptors’ year is becoming “maddening, frustrating, and consistently inconsistent”?

Upon meeting Aaron Rose, I was truly surprised. The man who I knew as an uncompromisingly honest, loud social media journalist was quite shy, quiet and unassuming. After a few niceties, Rose took off his Canada Goose jacket and we began to talk about life.

Growing up, Rose wasn’t much of a writer. He described himself as “terrible at English” growing up and his father, Toronto architect Lorne Rose, concurred. “My kids would pretend to read a book. They did what they had to to get by in English class,” Lorne said.

However, after religiously watching legendary sports commentator and former writer Michael Wilbon on ESPN’s talk show Pardon the Interruption in his youth, Rose was inspired to cover sports. So how does a kid who struggles in English enter the field of journalism?

When Rose entered Aga Maksimowska’s Crescent School creative writing class in grade 12, he only knew high school English as a class to do book reports. “Shakespeare is obviously a classic, but I wasn’t so good at those things,” Rose said. “When I had some freedom to sort of write about whatever I wanted or tell a story or write creatively, I think I did better.” Lorne Rose credits this class in inspiring him to pursue journalism. 

Near his graduation from McGill in 2017, Rose only applied to one grad program because he knew what he wanted to do; to get a Master of Science in journalism at Northwestern University, the same school that his hero Michael Wilbon went to.

Northwestern is where Rose met Darren Zaslau; Zaslau is now an on-air host for FOX 53 and 22 The Point in Pittsburgh, which he made a point to say is the 26th largest media market in the U.S. Back then, they were just fellow students and close friends. Zaslau described Rose as a hard-working, brutally honest journalist who is never afraid to speak his mind. “He was that guy that was not afraid to give his opinion on anything,” Zaslau said. “It could be sports, it could be baseball, basketball, it could be where we go for lunch that day. It could be that the bread on the sandwich really wasn’t that great.”

While Rose appreciated the friendships and connections he gained at Northwestern, he described the program as a little underwhelming. “I felt like it was one year that was going to turn me into some journalism [savant]… and easily everyone would want to hire you,” Rose said. “That just wasn’t the case.”

In Oct. 2018, Rose graduated from his program. Like many journalists, he had some trouble finding a job initially and spent months living at home. He described this experience as very valuable. He reached out to journalism titans like MLB columnist/insider Jeff Passan and NFL insider Adam Schefter asking them about their favourite books and to his surprise, they responded. “I read a ton of books, more reading than I’ve probably ever done the rest of my life combined,” Rose said. 

From Feb. 2019 to March 2020, Rose spent a year in Eau Claire, Wisconsin covering sports for Leader Telegram. He described this experience as ‘depressing at times’ due to his distance from his then-girlfriend (now fiancee) Alexa, friends and family. However, he gained valuable skills in his field. “I don’t know anything about girls’ volleyball… but what you find in those opportunities, when you have to have a story done by 10:30… you learn to tell stories about the people,” Rose said. 

In March 2020, Rose was offered a job at Sports Illustrated and, with the choice of being a baseball reporter or a basketball reporter, chose to cover the Toronto Raptors.

When Rose first started the job, he was earning $3,000 US a month to write three to five stories a day, which he described as difficult. “Sometimes I have to write stories that I’m just like, “this is junk,” and I hate doing it. But I feel like that’s the problem, increasingly that’s where this journalism industry is going,” Rose said.

With this model, Rose’s job requires a tremendous amount of self-motivation. In his previous job at Eau Claire, he had an editor who was around his age, and although he didn’t always agree with him, he was glad to have someone looking out for his work. “[At my current job], I don’t have anybody overseeing me,” Rose said. “It’s sometimes nice to not have a boss. But on the other side, the fact that I don’t have anybody pushing me to get better, I don’t have anybody catching [a] spelling mistake or a typo… is at times frustrating.”

A year into the job, Sports Illustrated moved away from the guaranteed salary and began implementing a clicks-based pay model. Rose realized that it would be very difficult to make a living just through SI, so in Aug. 2021, he created a TikTok account. “When you work in sports, you work some night shifts, right? So what am I going to do during the day? I could sit around doing nothing, and I’m not so good at that. So I was like, I should try and learn video,” Rose said.

Rose has gained a following of over 34,000 with nearly 5,000,000 likes on TikTok, and through a sponsorship with the online gambling platform Bodog, earns anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per video.

When Rose looks forward to his journalism career, he’s not sure of the future, but he knows one thing for sure. “I know I’ll be married, probably have a house… but what is this industry going to look like in five years? I can’t answer that question.”