Clarion-Ledger Mississippi State beat

An excellent job. Like others have said earlier, there's only 14 primary SEC beatwriters and while the Ledger has been hit hard by cuts elsewhere, their big-time college beats haven't suffered.

As others have shown, this is an excellent job in its own right or a great stepping stone to a beat with more national significance.

 

Is this really true? Granted, the AJC has dramatically scaled back a lot of its coverage, but I'd argue that the Banner-Herald and the AJC could both be considered to have primary beatwriters for Georgia.

You could probably say the same for Florida, specifically because which paper would you say represents the primary beat? Gainesville? Orlando? Jax?

 

Good point. The Ledger writer, for most people in Mississippi, is the writer of record for State. That's a shame many State fans stop there only, because Brad Locke does a great job on that beat.

 

There isn't any one "right" job. Jobs are what you make of them.

The person hired will have a wonderful opportunity to craft a beat and showcase their skills covering a major NCAA university athletic program for a quality newspaper with a large readership. It's a great stage to work on. What one does with it from there is up to them.

 

Used to be, writers stayed at papers or publications for years and years. They grew old at that site and had peers at other papers who also chose to commit long term.
There were (and still are) lots of writers at smaller papers in the state who would kill to get an interview for this Clarion-Ledger job.

Nowadays, anyone who gets an interview is usually under 28 and most often from an out-of-state publication.
And those people all sit across from the editor and tell him how committed and dedicated to the job they will be in Oxford or Starkville or Hattiesburg.

And both parties know that whoever's hired is going to look at the job as a stepping stone.

 

For what (I've heard) they pay, it IS a stepping stone.

 

Which is a damn shame because there are very good guys at those smaller papers who can do the job. Here's hoping that Rusty selects one of them.

 

Probably true. And that's a terrible indictment of the business.

 

I imagine this one's about done. Who's the lucky person?

 

Mike Bonner from the The Gazette/KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has been hired to fill this position. Mike's first day is expected to be May 1.

 

Apparently the new hire won't be working with Rusty. He's getting out of the business. He is good people. Tough loss for industry.

 

Strange turn of events. Wish him well. Looks like someone's going to be getting an offer they thought they wouldn't get.