Sports Reporter | Lake City, Florida

JournalismJobs.com - Job Listing - Sports Reporter

The Lake City Reporter, a local daily newspaper in North Florida, has an opening for a versatile and aggressive sports reporter. This position offers the opportunity to cover excellent sports programs at two local high schools, plus football coverage of the Florida Gators and Florida State Seminoles.
The successful candidate will write about all sports important to our local readers, including short-track auto racing, outdoor activities such as hunting and fishing, and recreational leagues. The successful candidate must have good sports instincts and produce engaging locally focused content beyond game stories. Sports page design experience is a plus. Send a resume, clips and references to Robert Bridges, editor, Lake City Reporter at rbridges@lakecityreporter.com.

 

Back in the day, this paper was known as a good place to start if you wanted to eventually move on to one of Florida's large papers. A number of reporters and editors I worked with began their careers in Lake City.

The town has just about every fast-food and casual dining option imaginable because of its location near the intersection of interstates 10 and 75, so at least you won't go hungry there.

 

Such an underrated asset. You don't know hungry until you've finished writing a high school girls basketball gamer on deadline and there isn't a Chipotle nor a Taco Bell for 50 miles.

 

You'll eat at Ken's Bar-B-Que if you know what's up. You might also put on 30 pounds your first six months on the job, but that's purely anecdotal.

 

A couple of years ago I was covering the Georgia-Florida game and sat next to the Lake City Reporter sports editor. He said at the time he was a one-man show and was working 90 hours a week. Don't know if he's still there

 

I think there was a point a few years ago when it was one person running it after the previous sports editor left. There have been two writers (maybe no one with the editor title) for a couple years since, I believe. Looks like one is leaving for a new job at a bigger paper, and so I suspect there will continue to be two people.

As for working 90 hours a week, I've done that at a few jobs, but I never had to do that in Lake City and I was doing the majority of the design and had a two-story-a-day quota. I'll go out on a limb and guess the writers are still taking photos and designing pages, but it only publishes five or six days a week, there are only two high schools, most of the youth/community sports you'll end up covering aren't going to be up on deadline and the section rarely seems to be more than four pages. I think the only place someone in this job might find himself or herself really stretched is going to be if they choose to go to UF and FSU home games. I'm sure that coverage isn't required, but of course you're going to want to go and get the clips, experience and connections. I suspect you might find yourself struggling to find the time to get to a mid-week media op in Gainesville and then cover the game with the other responsibilities, but it's manageable.

 

That's incorrect. Tim Kirby was sports editor there for many, many years. Eric Jackson moved up and is now sports editor.

 

There was a brief time a couple years ago, after Tim left, that there was only one person (Brandon, I believe). I don't know if that lasted a few weeks or a few months, but there was a brief period where that was the case, and Tim did not overlap with either of the current staffers, I don't believe.

 

Totally unrelated ...

MonsterLobster, you have the best avatar photo on SJ.com!

 

At one of the Disney courses, you can aim your 500-mile drive at a monorail.

 

Don't you mean a car from Ontario driving slow in the left lane?