Reporter - Sports | Carlsbad, New Mexico

Job opportunity at Gannett | USA TODAY NETWORK - Reporter - Sports

The Carlsbad Current-Argus, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, is hiring a reporter!

The ideal person leads in content creation and optimization and has primary responsibility for ensuring quality sports and outdoor recreation content across digital and print platforms. Applies story-telling expertise to ensure high quality content with a focus on video, narrative writing, photography, alternative story forms and story presentation.

The role requires:

• Beat writing: prep sports, community sports and semiprofessional coverage
  
  
• Analysis and column writing skills
  
  
• Line editing and co-editing of daily publication; editing for clarity, legality, spelling, grammar, punctuation and style
  
  
• Willingness and interest in covering outdoor recreation and non-traditional sports topics
  
  
• Experience in video and photography
  
  
• Coordination with planning editor in content for print and online publication
  
  
• Good news judgment and experience in breaking news coverage
  
  
• Other duties as necessary
  

 

Not a bad gig for someone fresh out of college. It's a one-man sports department in Carlsbad and Carlsbad High School sports are usually pretty solid. They're a state powerhouse in baseball and had a MLB first round draft pick this year in Trevor Rogers. Carlsbad football is supposed to be pretty solid this fall and Carlsbad boys and girls basketball has been good in recent years too. Carlsbad boys hoops was a state runner-up two years ago. The previous sports reporter covered Artesia a little bit as well, which is about 20 minutes from Carlsbad. Artesia High School is a state powerhouse in football and has won a New Mexico state-record 29 state championships. There's no layout with this position. That's done by Gannett's Phoenix Design Studio.
Gannett is all about digital and video and the deadline for the paper is 7 p.m. So, night games don't get into the next day's paper.
A negative about the position is the town's location. Carlsbad is only about 28,000 people and is very expensive to live in because of the oil industry. I know past reporters in Carlsbad have had issues because the rent is very high there. Carlsbad is also kind of isolated in southeastern New Mexico. Midland-Odessa, Texas, is about two and half hours away, El Paso, Texas, is about three hours away and Albuquerque is around four and a half hours from Carlsbad.

 

I'm curious since the Roswell posting also mentioned Artesia coverage -- is that probably the better of these two gigs?

 

There are 3 schools in coverage area (Eddy County): Carlsbad, Artesia and Loving.

Baseball (11 state titles) is the big sport at Carlsbad, softball (15 state titles, 25 state championship game appearances) is the big sport at Loving, and football (29 state titles) is the big sport at Artesia.

Cbad is also historically good in softball (last state title came in 2010). Girls soccer team is consistently good. Wrestling has become a state contender in the past couple years, and they’re built contend for at least a couple more years. Boys track and boys golf have also improved quite a bit in the past year or two.

Cbad girls hoops is consistently good, but they’ve been great the past couple years (winning 55 combined games). I expect them to still be elite for a couple more years. And they have a stud player whom I’d be shocked if she doesn’t end up going DI.

Cbad boys hoops has improved in recent years, reaching the state title game in March 2016, but they’re now in a rebuilding phase. Their top shooters were seniors that season, and their top post players were seniors this past winter. However, there’s hope they’ll continue to stay strong because the coach is quite good at developing individual talent (at least 6 players went on to sign with college or JC teams since 2013).

Cbad football has a bright future ahead of them. Based on strides they made the past 2 years, I’d be shocked if they don’t make the playoffs in 2017.

Little League baseball is also big in Carlsbad every summer. There are really good youth baseball teams in Cbad. At least 1 team from Cbad usually goes to state/regional tournament every year, whether it's the 10 year olds or the 13 year olds.

Artesia boys hoops won 19 games this past season, its best campaign in close to a decade. But its main group were seniors, so I’m unsure if they’ll build on what they did or their window of opportunity closed. Artesia baseball is decent every year, and softball was state runner-up in 2017. Volleyball team is also consistently strong.

Loving volleyball is good again since coach came back for his 2nd stint with team. Made playoffs for first time since 1999. They’re big on staying in attack mode at all times and having players contribute in multiple ways (one is now a setter/middle hitter hybrid, a couple others are defensive specialist/outside hitter hybrids).

Loving girls hoops has also become pretty solid in recent years, finally getting past 1st round at state this last season. Loving boys hoops is also on positive path, looking to reach playoffs for 3rd time in last 4 years. Loving girls track is also fairly good.

The Carlsbad Current-Argus has a strong digital presence for sports in the New Mexico/West Texas region.

My last day at Current-Argus will be Friday. If you have any questions about the job, living in Cbad, etc., let me know.

 

both, carlsbad and roswell will cover artesia-area sports. carlsbad is a one-man band whereas roswell is a two-person sports department. one of the nice things about the roswell, carlsbad, hobbs area is that we (i run the hobbs sports coverage) have some overlapping coverage at times and all help each other out with stories and/or photos.