Sports Editor- Gainesville, Texas

From JJobs.com
http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=1513499

Company: Gainesville Daily Register
Position:
SPORTS EDITOR
Location:
Gainesville, Texas
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Negotiable
Ad Expires:
August 26, 2013
Job ID: 1513499
Website: http://www.gainesvilleregister.com

Description:

The Gainesville Daily Register is looking for a versatile Sports Editor who can provide excellent county-wide coverage of high school sports and other events.

Our sports editor must embrace the fact that today’s newsroom operates 24/7, with frequent website and social media updates. Candidates must have excellent management and organizational skills and knowledge of AP style. Experience with Quark pagination, website design and social media is preferred.

The Gainesville Daily Register is a 5,000-circulation, daily newspaper in north Texas. Staffing includes an editor, two reporters and a sports editor.

Known as the “Star of North Texas,” Gainesville is located in Cooke County. Gainesville is an hour from the DFW Metroplex and 30 minutes from Denton and Sherman. The city is home to North Central Texas College and offers a range of recreational activities.

Send resume to Jim Perry, Publisher, The Gainesville Daily Register, 306 E. California, Gainesville, TX 76240; or email jperry@ntin.net.

Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. is a privately owned local media company serving 150 communities in 24 states. Based in Montgomery, Ala., CNHI operates 80 daily newspapers, 48 non-dailies and numerous specialty publications in the Midwest, South and East.

 

Any of you know anything about this opening? Seems like it comes open every few years lately.

 

This newspaper has sports deadlines of 7 p.m. during the week and 10 p.m. for Saturday. That's no way to put out a QUALITY sports section.

 

I've been told Sean Gorman, who worked at The Duncan Banner, got the job. Best of luck to him.

 

I thought it was a PM paper.

 

I interviewed for this one. Deadlines are 6 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 1:15 a.m. at the latest on Saturday for the weekend edition during football season only.

 

Both are ridiculous. Unless you are a major metro, you don't need to back up the deadlines later than midnight except on very rare occasions.

Any reporter worth his/her salt should be able to cover a 7:30 game that ends around 10 pm, drive 10 minutes back to the office (or a McDonald's if working remotely) and crank out 15 inches plus agate by 11:15 -11:30 pm. Done it many, many times. You're not trying to win a Pulitzer with a high school gamer on deadline. Get the damn thing written on time, which is an under-appreciated art in itself.

 

I had this job before Sean. You definitely have to get creative with the coverage due to the odd deadlines. If you're a person who likes to go home at 5 p.m. most nights, the early deadline isn't always a bad thing.

That bad thing is that what prints is at least three days old by the time it reaches the readers. You cover a game Tuesday night, lay it out Wednesday and it's mailed out on Thursday. During basketball season, it can be four days before your game coverage reaches readers because they no longer have a Monday paper and the Friday deadlines are early. So if you have to put a lot of emphasis on getting stuff online to get the most up to date coverage to your readers. The task of getting items online is very tedious and time consuming given the outdated system and outdated computers at the paper.

That being said, the job isn't as bad as it seems. The schools and programs in the area are pretty good for their respective classes and the coaches are all great to work with. You only cover seven schools at this paper so you have plenty of time to get good coverage of all of them - though space becomes an issue most days.

A good way to provide good coverage while working around the deadlines is with good features and columns. Stuff that isn't time sensitive can make for good packages. They higher-ups take a hands-off approach to sports so you're free to do almost anything you want (except write a farewell column). They might make you write a story on the local gym or golf course to appease advertisers every now and then but the section is yours.

The extra late deadline on Saturdays is a bit of an overkill. I was out on Friday nights by midnight most nights. You have to remember that this is a one man shop and there is no staff photographer, so you're not only writing a game story on football Fridays but you're also taking/processing photos, taking calls for games around the county, writing a volleyball roundup and laying out the paper. Most of that happens after driving 20 minutes back to the office when your game ended at 10 p.m.

Like with any job it has it's pros and cons. The crappy deadlines are a big con but they don't mean you can't have a great sports section. I worked with Sean when we were both in college at UNT. He's a great writer and a tireless worker. I know he'll do an excellent job.

 

Sounds like some neighboring AM paper could helicopter in and steal quite a bit of market share.

So Gainesville is all mail? No carriers?

 

Yep it's all by mail. They print in Ardmore - a big reason for the strange deadlines.

 

It's CNHI

 

Mark2010 really summed up everything you need to know in his last post.