Sports Editor, Hattiesburg, Miss.

On jjobs.com:

Company: Hattiesburg American
Position: Sports Editor
Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Negotiable
Website:
http://hattiesburgamerican

Description:
SPORTS EDITOR - The Hattiesburg American, a 22,000-circulation daily in southeast Mississippi, is seeking an ideas-filled and results-oriented sports editor who will remake our sports section online and in print with a focus on local enterprise and personalities, strong opinion and reader interaction.
Hattiesburg is the home of the (Conference USA) University of Southern Mississippi, as well as two junior colleges and a private college. Prep and youth sports are vital to this area and to our coverage. You will manage a staff of three reporters, an assistant editor and a part-time data clerk.
The sports editor must be an excellent planner, coach, editor and designer/paginator. Knowledge of Quark a plus.
E-mail cover letter stating your ideas of what makes a strong sports section — in print and online — resume and work samples to executive editor Kathleen Williams, kbwilliams@hattiesburgamerican.com; 825 N. Main St.; Hattiesburg MS 39401.
EOE/M/F/D/V

 

Not a bad town. About an hour from New Orleans and 90 min. from Jackson. A decent gig for a new SE.
They do a lot of preps from what I remember, and USM. They don't tap into the Saints so don't get your hopes up.

 

What happened to Van Arnold?

 

Anyone seen the sports section? How's the staff?

 

it's been a couple of years for me, but i certainly wasn't impressed.

 

And where is Hattiesburg re: Katrina recovery?

USM boosters should praise their manifestation of God every day that they have a football program that produced Brett Favre and Michael Jackson, else they'd be in the Sun Belt or Southland.

 

I've been down there. I didn't see the paper, however. But it was like 90 minutes from New Orleans. Seemed like a fairly decent college town. Chain restaurants and such. It's really in the middle of nowhere, but for a youngster with no attachments, this might be a very good job - especially with the paper's focus on Southern Miss.

 

Hattiesburg is about an hour north of the Coast. They got a lot of wind damage from the storm, but their biggest aftereffect was a population boom. There was a story in the American within the last week that it had largely dwindled away now.

 

It's an O.K. paper...it's Gannett, so you know what that means. A friend of mine who works there said they went on a hiring boom a while back...but she's crazy, so there could be no truth to that. Hattiesburg is a pretty decent town

 

It's boring as hell in Hattiesburg. Plus, as far as I remember, a lot of the staff was older. Could be a difficult transition for a youngster, and knowing Gannett, they likely want someone with 10 years experience, and will probably pay him like he's just out of college.

 

if you can put up with gannett, that could be a pretty good gig to use as a steppingstone. I thought they had a bigger staff, however.

 

I think the paper does like to do some enterprising stuff, so that could be interesting. As for Hattiesburg, I wouldn't say it's in the middle of nowhere – close to the Coast and New Orleans, and not to far from Pensacola and Panama City. As for the city itself, I liked it a lot, and it sure beats the other two Mississippi towns that boast Division I-A schools.