From Radford University to the Washington Post

David Betancourt fell in love with Spiderman comic books, as a young boy. Little did he know that one day would be writing comic articles for one of the top newspapers in the United States.

Now, a comic culture writer for the Washington Post, Betancourt tells the story of how he went from being a Highlander, working for The Tartan, to becoming a nationally recognized reporter and writing comics for Marvel.

During his time at Radford University, Betancourt was a sportswriter for The Tartan and a sports broadcaster for WVRU. At the time, The Washington Post was in its initial stages of going online. Betancourt said that in those days, unless you lived in Northern Virginia, it was hard to get your hands on a copy of The Post. He relied on Mrs. Sandra Kelly, his teacher and mentor, to bring a copy to his journalism class every morning.

Betancourt loved reading the style section because that’s where all the entertainment was. One morning, Betancourt was reading a story about the alcoholic beverage Cristal Champagne frequently appearing in famous rap music videos. This story was relatable to many college students at the time because they were watching these rap videos.

“Low and behold, Mrs. Kelly picked up that style section and read the headline of that story,” recalled Betancourt, who now writes for the entertainment section. “So I said, ‘oh yeah I read that story.”

His interest in the article caused a domino effect. Everyone in the class started chiming in and wanted to speak because they also related to the story. A few days later, Betancourt's mentor told him that the kids in the class looked up to him and he had the potential to be a leader. Twenty years later, Betancourt still fondly remembers that moment.

After graduating, Betancourt applied to an internship program with the Los Angeles Times. The program was for minority college graduates who were interested in journalism. He sent in his clips and the work that he had done at Radford. He was among 20 finalists who were flown out to Los Angeles for additional interviews. But when he got to LA a big tribunal of LA Times reporters were perplexed that Betancourt did not have any professional clips. He didn’t make the cut to the next round and was back on a flight home soon after.

“They didn’t care that I was a sports columnist for the Tartan,” said Betancourt, “They didn’t care that I had a sports talk show at WVRU. To them, if you didn’t do an internship or didn’t have professional clips, you didn’t have a job.”

On the plane, Betancourt met a young man who had interviews for the program and also didn’t make the cut but had a job at The Post.

“One day he called me up and said that there was an opening in the sports department for a news aid,” said Betancourt who was 24 years old at the time. “It was an entry level position at the bottom of the totem pole.” Betancourt applied and got the job.

Fifteen years later, Betancourt writes all aspects of comic book culture for The Washington Post's Comic Riffs blog. He works with Marvel, writing Miles Morales comics, the main character in Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse and still hopes to reach more milestones in his career.

“I still have the same hunger, drive, and ambition and there’s still work to be done.”