Spotlight on Andy Hutchison

Andy Hutchison, a writer at the Newtown Bee since 2008 does an amazing job covering our sports in our town. Hutchison’s writing career began at Fairfield High School for the town's local paper Fairfield Citizen news. 

Hutchison was playing hockey as well as covering the hockey team and the school's tennis teams. During Hutchison’s junior and senior year he took a Tv production class in which he, along with his classmates, were able to make their own show for the local cable station, Hutchison videotaped professional hockey games with a camcorder.  Along with interviews from players. Hutchison  spent his time recovering the New Haven Senators and also the Hartford Whalers. While he was at college at Southern Connecticut State University, he continued with the cable access program for once of his elective courses along with majoring in Communication and minoring in Journalism along with some photography class mixed in. 

Hutchison’s Sports Writing professor was the sports editor at the Bridgeport/Connecticut Post where Hutchison landed a freelance position working for his professor. During his time working for the Post Hutchison covered the football and men's soccer team at SCSU. 

During this time, Hutchison had an internship at WTNH channel. In which, Hutchison occasionally got to assist camera men and sports anchors at Whalers, UConn men’s and women’s basketball and New York Giants Football games. Also during this time Hutchison watched multiple games, recorded, and logged time codes for highlights to be used in the nightly sports reports on TV. After college, Hutchison worked a full time job as a business and education reporter for a publication in Darien while working as a part time sports reporter at the New Haven register. 

After a year Hutchison took a job as the sports editor at the Fairfield Minuteman which is very similar to his job today at the Newtown Bee. Hutchison worked there for 7 years, most of the time covering school sports but also some interesting opportunities including interviewing Joe Namath, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Charles Nagy. 

Hutchison’s role was a dual position, covering sports along with news, features, and sometimes police reports. All this work was done by Hutchison along with interns to help with assistance. Around 2001 -2002 Hutchison joined the Radio booth WICC, doing color commentary as well as postgame coach and player interviews with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers ( Now Bridgeport islanders) during periods and pregame.

In 2006-07 Hutchison was director of communication/ radio and internet color commentator for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers where Hutchison wrote all features for the AHL website and team yearbook program. After this Hutchison took his job at the Newtown Bee where his responsibility was photography and sports articles for the paper. Hutchison is such a hard worker and is incredible at his job spending around 45 hours a week writing and editing articles and then also covering games, taking photographs and doing interviews. This work is no joke, and it is very constant especially when school sports are in session. Most teams play a couple games a week so Hutchison tries to take the best moments or best game to highlight and cover the most of. 

“Coaches and parents who submit information, such as game stats, are very helpful in making sure The Bee gets information on all of the games.” Hutchison said. 

Hutchison loves writing; it has always been his love and always something he wants to do. 

“Newspaper reporting is rewarding in that there is always something exciting happening in the world – in this case school sports or town races and other competitions – that can be told/ shared with readers. Sports, in particular, have drama and lots of energy. There are key moments, scoring runs, turning points, and success stories from goals to milestones to write about.” Hutchison said being asked why he writes for a newspaper and not for a show or a book. Hutchison loves the excitement of one minute being a pool capturing photos so swimmers dive in the water then the next at blue and gold stadium watching a football game. 

The youth in which Hutchison is very active in covering, it is always such a cool feeling being 10 years old and having an article written about your game like you are a professional. 

“Oh yes, Andy is his name, oh my gosh yes he is such a hard worker and he is always at everything related to Newtown sports it is always cool to see yourself in the paper and that is thanks to Andy he really makes us seem so important.” NHS junior Colin Dirga said. 

 That's What Andy Hutchison can do. 

“There is a lot more to a team and its games than the final scores and helping paint a picture of what teams and athletes have accomplished each week is a challenge I enjoy taking on,” Hutchison said. 

             Hutchison gives so much pride to youth athletes and all athletes in Newtown.