statewide prep sports positions

North Carolina will be one of the new states being covered. I was told that there would be a meeting in Charlotte in the near future to organize the N.C. site. I don't have much more than that. In our phone conversation, Mark sounded excited about expanding to a new state. As I said, I received an e-mail stating that they had reviewed my resume and want me to do freelancing for N.C.

 

Went through the interview process with them ... very strange, lots of religious overtones. Big sales pitch. Seems like a big jump to go from Oklahoma and Arkansas to nationwide overnight. Almost too good to be true. Anyone have more info on them? Is this a legitimate operation or some kind of scam?

 

They're solid in Oklahoma. It's a good mix of rankings (which have been replaced by another agency in terms of "official" rankings. It's more of an internet magazine format online.

It's worth a shot and especially if you're in Texas.

 

Dos, if I was intimidated by "religious overtones," I'd chunk that intimidation pretty quick. Decent gigs don't come along very often. I'd call this one of the best ops on the thread right now.

 

CoachesAid has never been the official rankings in Oklahoma. Some smaller papers have been running their rankings for awhile, though. In some sports, they had combined the Oklahoman and Tulsa World's rankings (primarily for state basketball tournament seeding) but now they go strictly off of the coaches rankings through OKRankings.com.

They do good work in Oklahoma, though, especially covering the smaller schools that often fall outside the scope of the two larger papers. I'm not sure how well or how quickly it'll catch on in other states.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys. The religion angle was just a bit puzzling, that's all. Never had it brought up in a sports media job interview before...

 

Honestly, if I'm going to go FT covering high school sports, I think I would rather work here than most newspapers. Unfortunately, they don't have operations in any place I have worked or want to relocate to.

 

A guy from there was at the state track meet last weekend and talked to me about coming to work for them and gave me an information packet. Sounds kinda interesting, but I don't know...

 

does anyone know where they are expanding to exactly?

 

esport, that's a good question. Still waiting for acknowledgement from them that I even inquired about a position for NM, although their little map claims they are coming here soon.

 

went to interview for what they call a content coordinator. as previously mentioned, big time sales pitch. "coordinator" basically translates into editor. the coordinators are responsible for locating and hiring at least three writers to work under them in a given state. coverage areas (and literal coverage of what sports) are extremely ambiguous and the state I interviewed for is far too large for one to four people to man (the original pitch was to have two coordinators with 3-4 reporters under them, then the plan was arbitrarily changed to one coordinator via a meeting held in Jacksonville, Fla.).

person conducting interview told me he had no journalism background and was a hired business man going around and trying to select people in a field he obviously knew little about. the salary range pitch changed from 35-40K, then to 26-40K, then to 22-36K. found this place advertised on a craigslist site for minimum 24k for the coordinator position, but was told via phone that the minimum for entry-level was 22k. the interviewer asked what kind of offer they would have to make, then low-balled the actual minimum salary.

they apparently are interested in covering all kinds of sports, not just preps. good luck getting a credential for D-I athletics and NFL, NBA, etc., for a new "aggressive expansion" online oklahoma-originated high school sports outlet that requires a paid subscription for a lot of content.

the site produces or use to produce a decent looking preview magazine, but when I asked about that, was given a flaky answer in terms of its future and what it was all about.

in short, I drove two hours there and two hours back to interview for this and it turned out to be completely worthless. my interviewer contacted me about the job interview via text message once, which I didn't think was an overly professional way to communicate with a potential candidate, especially with regard to meeting a complete stranger at starbucks for a serious full-time job with benefits (but only after 90 days, they said!).

it may be decent in okla. and ark., but this expansion seems like a scam. they may be able to fool some naive recent J-school grads, but I am not exactly a rookie and am not drinking the kool-aid.

if you didn't hear back from them, chances are you aren't missing anything. this is in no way better than working for an actual established newspaper, at least in my opinion. and I wouldn't hold my breath for stringing for this thing either. it really isn't that hard to find a freelancing job, even in these times.

 

I too was interviewing for a state content coordinator position. And, was told he wanted to meet me on the side of the road somewhere on I-95 as he had to be in Jacksonville for another big group meeting. I was going to have to drive 4.5 hours there and 4.5 hours back just for a 30 minute meeting when we could've waited until he got back to Charlotte and I could've driven the few hours up that way and have a real interview. The conclusion I came to is for someone who does take the job, it's going to be a lot of long days just trying to get this up and running. This is basically a startup and all startup companies have their people working tremendously long hours just to get it going. And, who says it's going to get going? Plus, for a salary of 20s or 30s, I wouldn't even want to put in those kind of hours. I'll stay at my 40-hour a week sports job and wait for an established company to be hiring. That way, I can at least know what I'm getting into.

Also, after more research, I found that this company has no physical address. Only a post box. That's very fishy to me.