Sports Editor - Hillsboro, ND

JournalismJobs.com - Job Listing - Sports editor

Description:
The Hillsboro Banner in Hillsboro, N.D., is looking for a sports editor to cover sports and a little news for our weekly publication.

The Banner is a three-time Best of the Dakotas award winner, having been named best small weekly twice and best mid-size weekly once (our numbers are growing) among all North Dakota and South Dakota weeklies.

We are a family-owned publication that has won more than 300 awards in our state's Better Newspaper Contest the past six years.

We live in a town of 1,600 so the summer sports season is light. If there are no games or meetings on Fridays we close the office and pretend we are normal people. Salary in the 20K-25K range but we also work a number of four-day work weeks.

Hillsboro is roughly 40 miles north of Fargo, N.D. and 35 miles south of Grand Forks, N.D.

To apply, send a cover letter, resume and writing samples to: Hillsboro Banner, c/o Editor Cole Short, PO Box 39, Hillsboro, ND 58045 or email materials to hbanner@rrv.net. We also can be reached by phone at 701-636-4241.

 

$20-$25K? I know it's a weekly and I know it's ND, but ...

 

Probably spend that 20-25k on winter heating alone.

 

Valid points about the pay and the winter cold you’d have to combat, but there are some excellent high school sports in the area: Hillsboro-Central Valley, May-Port, Northern Cass have been powers for a while in various sports.

I did my 2.5 years in ND on the other side of the state, but I tried to make it to Fargo and Grand Forks as much as I could. It helps that a lot of state tourneys are there. They’re legitimately fun cities. You wouldn’t cover NDSU or UND here, but they’re nearby entertainment options. No, the pay’s not great, but ND is really cheap overall. Somebody starting out could do worse than ND.

But yeah, be mindful of the cold. It’s no joke. In some winters, I had to wait for weeks at a time for the temperature to break 0. It’s not for everybody.

 

I don't think anyone is asking for great pay even good. But $20,000? Good way to start out...not paying student loans or being able to make car payments. That salary is disrespectful to anyone. Everyone agrees journalism is in a tough spot, but you're not getting many quality applicants with that salary.

 

I don’t disagree. I’m just trying to talk up the area a bit.

 

$20-25k is bullshit, but it’s also reality for a lot of papers like this.

I interviewed for five one-man sports dept. jobs at either small dailies or weeklies. That was 14 years ago go now. I was offered between $18,000 and $23,500.

A guy at one shop, the biggest town and paper I interviewed in and my last interview, actually, offered me $18,500. I told him I’d been offered considerably more elsewhere. He stood up, closed the office door and said he could get up to $19,000, but I’d be making more than a lot of people out in the newsroom.

I settled for $22k but near a metro area and my then-girlfriend.

Obviously you’d hope salaries would increase in the decade-plus since my experiences, but would it really surprise anyone if they haven’t? Not saying it’s right (ha, $15 min wage would screw a lot of these positions!) but it’s reality.

 

My first full-time job 19 years ago at a weekly in a metro area I got $9.50 an hour. It didn't bother me at the time but it probably should have. I lived with my parents, who still paid for most everything, and even while it wasn't a ton I pretty much saved all those pennies I got from that place. I was only there four months before I moved to my first daily as a sports reporter at a small daily. I made $24,000 a year there and was finally on my own. But it was just me and cost of living was almost nothing there. I saved a ton there too.

But you know, even then you could look at those salaries and think, man, there just isn't much in this profession. I had friends in other fields right out of college surpass $50,000 with no work experience (you know we all busted our butts getting those clips before we even had jobs). I still didn't make 50 grand, although I was much closer, when I got out of the biz 11 years ago. And then, before the internet totally ruined our dreams although we started to see signs, there seemed to be a future in this. Now there just isn't.

At $20,000 with the cost of living surely much, much higher than it was in 2000, and what we know know of this industry and media in general for the most part, why do people even think about starting out in this? I guess dreams and doing what you like and all that, but man it's tough.

 

A guy I went to college with started at $15,000 as a one-man sports dept. at a daily newspaper in a not-THAT-small town in ~2006. Basically minimum wage. He didn't stay long, thankfully. No idea what they're paying these days.

 

We have to rethink our business model when we are trying to hire full-time workers for $20-$25K. Geesh.

 

I'm willing to bet my old paper tried to replace me for $20,000 or less (I made $27K my last year). They eventually gave up on it because no one applied who would settle for so little. Now they have their news guy also doing sports. And I don't doubt that they probably didn't give him a raise and expect him to do both jobs in 40 hours.

 

And I bet the publisher is pulling $150-200K, plus bennies like country club memberships, etc. ...