SEC Football Writers

Although he doesn't need defending, I know Christopher Smith. I use to work with him at Football.com and he is a good guy and good editor. He was very helpful to me while I worked there. With that being said, he's just an editor. He doesn't decide what freelancers get paid. The only company I ever worked for who paid a 100 bucks or more for a story was Rivals.com. Most of the freelance gigs out there don't pay a lot money. These type of jobs are for people looking to make a little extra on the side or a student. In this case, if you do well at least at the end of the day you may have a chance to go full-time and isn't that what most of us busting our behinds out there are striving for in the end? Just saying...

 

Why should a fan care what Joe Student getting $15 for his story who doesn't cover th team have to say?

 

I'm not saying they should care, but the point is he has no control on what his company pays freelancers.

 

Most fans that follow me on twitter are following blogs like SDS, Fansided, SBnation for their sports news. Most of these companies have freelancers writing for their sites.

 

And then

The bolded areas indicate this posting belongs in the freelance/stringer forum, not the main jobs forum.

For recent grads trying to get work in the field, always remember it is freelance/independent contract work if you are required to fill out a W9, and then receive a 1099 for tax purposes.

 

Just wanted to make a statement about my experiences and conversations with established journalists in our profession. My statements are not fueled by my desire for a position, only through what I have seen in my quest to set my feet and become established somewhere, anywhere. Many of the well known columnists are multi-faceted, working in radio and TV as well as writing, both digitally and on print news staffs. That being said, $20 per article is about the average you are going to find in the freelancing world, unlesss you work for Rivals (this is coming from Geoff Ketchum, a Rivals.com writer). For we you sports writers we must not forget that the most important thing we can receive is the coverage. Money will come later.

It's rough out in these streets and journalists now have to get in where they fit in, whether through conventional or unconventional means. Working freelance for a company like Saturday Down South -- in the long run -- will get you much farther than being buried on a little-known news staff doing community journalism in a small town in Montana or Texas. Especially if that digital outlet has an archive section. Speaking from experience, a lot of radio content is pulled from digital outlets like Saturday Down South, Bleacher Report and Sportsmanias, allowing those young writers coverage -- and possibly airtime -- that they wouldn't receive anywhere else.

And to Christopher Smith, is the position still available? Is there a timeline for hiring? I emailed my resume and clips but haven't heard anything.

 

Christopher, this is where you lost the room.
You don't do much original reporting, which means you're piggybacking off the hard work of others to carry your site. Instead of paying someone a living wage to work a beat and dig up their own stories, you pay them roughly minimum wage (or less) to repackage what others have already done.
This is a huge aggravating factor in the war for journalism's soul between "new school" internet/blogger types and "old school" newspaper types. The new school finds something someone else has spent hours or days working on, cranks out a quick post or column about it, and then laughs at how worthless and out of touch the newspaper hacks are. All the while ignoring that it's the original reporting done by the old school media that makes their existence possible.
If the newspapers suddenly went away the new school guys would suddenly have to find their own original material and the whole blogging industry would be exposed as a fraud in about a week.

Actually, depending on the paper, rapid promotions do unfortunately occur. It's not uncommon for someone with just a few years experience to be the next man up when a more experienced staffer leaves. I've been at my shop a long time, but if I find a better job and leave in July our new sports editor will be someone who is graduating from college this week. It's another unfortunate trend of the decline in the industry -- find someone cheaper, which means find someone younger.
But I digress.
If you're averaging 15 million page views a month, why can't you afford to pay more than $25 per story?
And, an honest question, what's the average turnaround time for an SDS story? An hour? two?
In my experience in newspapers, a story you have to do an interview on, write, dig up or shoot a photo for, and then post or publish takes about three hours. Some are quicker, of course, and if you're doing nothing but phoners that can get chopped down a bit. If that $25 is for a quick story you pump out in an hour, that's not bad. If it's for an afternoon's worth of work it's pretty low.

 

Any updates here?

 

Until this notification popped up in my email, I had completely forgot that I had applied a few weeks ago. Guess not.

 

Yeah, I haven't heard anything back either. I remember seeing a post (buried in this argumentative thread) they wanted to fill out the positions by June/July.

 

I had a phone interview a while ago but haven't heard anything since.

 

Same here.