NBA/Cavs beat writer -- Cleveland.com

Bring your major sports reporting experience to one of the premier sports reporting jobs in the country, where youll have the opportunity to work a high-profile role in a three-sport city. You'll cover all key stories about The Cleveland Cavaliers, writing, creating videos, and posting across multiple platforms including all relevant types of social media. You'll also participate in broadcasts in which you discuss the team, players, program, and season.

We've created an entirely new media company, and we'll provide the resources to help you do the job well, such as a MacBook and iPhone. You'll cover a major basketball team as it launches a new era, with a new coach and the first-round draft pick. If you are excited to provide more analysis and more reporting, and you've got the edge to dig in and find issues of interest to our readers, then this could be the right role for you.

Northeast Ohio Media Group is a new, digitally focused company that operates cleveland.com, publishes the Sun News and represents The Plain Dealer, the Sun News and cleveland.com for all multimedia ad sales and marketing. It also creates content for cleveland.com and the Sun News and is a source of content for The Plain Dealer.
The Requirements

To be a good fit for this opportunity you should have:
A bachelors degree in Journalism, Communications, or a related field, or equivalent experience
Five or more years of sports reporting experience at a daily newspaper, television station or online news or sports agency, with a proven ability in reporting and writing; a background covering professional basketball or a major college basketball program is preferred
Proven experience building, maintaining and engaging an active audience through blogging, social media and online comments
Demonstrated experience breaking news in a beat environment in real time across multiple platforms
Mastery of all relevant social media platforms and experience with search engine optimization (SEO) practices
The ability to work independently and prioritize tasks appropriately under deadline pressure
An understanding of the imperatives of multiple platforms (print, mobile, Internet, etc.) and a proven ability to utilize a broad set of tools to tell stories and engage the audience
Experience in taking photographs, producing short videos and posting them to the web and other internal production systems
An understanding of the methods and tools used to deliver content across a variety of platforms such as a content management system, smartphones, and others
The ability to leverage relationships with sources to deliver content that differentiates the organization from competitors
An understanding of and willingness to remain informed about industry advances and to proactively consider new methods of reaching audiences
You will need to be flexible enough to work many nights and weekends, particularly during basketball season, and to travel across the nation to cover games.
The Role

You'll be an expert on Cavaliers basketball and the NBA, working from home, the road, coffee shops and our Cleveland office, analyzing and reporting on the team and covering breaking news in a competitive environment. We are looking for someone who can react to breaking news quickly and with skill, and who is willing to ask hard questions to get behind how the program works and dig to get the real story.

We are looking to develop an entirely new approach to game coverage, providing information in the most accessible format possible, so your creativity will be key in designing the new approach.

Most of your time will be spent interviewing and interacting with Cavs coaches, administrators, and players; monitoring social media streams for breaking news; creating videos of yourself, players, and coaches to post; writing blog posts; and creating in-depth stories. Your focus will be to find interesting news throughout the year, which will mean finding new and exciting topics to discuss in the off-season and providing coverage that other news outlets don't.

Youll also appear regularly on a variety of video shows produced by the Northeast Ohio Media Group, in which you will engage with the audience in dissecting past games and handicapping upcoming contests. If you've had on-air and broadcast experience that would be helpful, but at a minimum you need to be excited to talk about the team, and able to provide some level of extemporaneous opinion and analysis as an expert on the topic.

Some of your specific responsibilities will include:
Gathering information and writing journalistically sound news elements for use across multiple media platforms
Learning and employing techniques for effective digital "beat-blogging" reporting across all platforms including:
Frequent, incremental posting throughout the day
Story aggregation and topical link-posting
Monitoring and engaging in reader comment streams on impact pages
Elevating comments into new posts when appropriate
Interacting on social media platforms with story shares, objective commentary, promotion of your topic and our content
Understanding and employing the means for monitoring audience interest and competitors posting on your topic, including setting up Google alerts, Twitter and RSS feeds
Providing opinion and analysis as the authoritative voice for Cavaliers basketball coverage
Using hardware, software and cloud-based equipment and systems for direct-to-web production and engagement
Making appearances on television and radio as a team expert
Note: this description is intended to give you a general overview of the position and is not an exhaustive listing of duties and responsibilities.
Keys to Success

To excel in this role, youll need to have experience in major professional or college reporting as well as refined digital skills. You will come into the role ready to be a digital leader, particularly in social media, and already trained in the use of all relevant platforms.

We are looking for someone who can capture the excitement of a major team, and who will stay on top of newsworthy happenings. Building readership in a competitive environment will require that you continually strive to be the fastest and best at breaking news. If you have strong sports-writing experience, thrive on competition, and have a hunger to work on a premier beat in a one of the nation's great sports cities, then we want to hear from you!

http://neohiomediagroup.jobinfo.com/mobile/description.php?jid=9910354&refid=220

 

Longest job description in history. And who got dropped from the beat in transition to "new, digitally focused company?"

 

No one was dropped. Mary Schmitt Boyer took a job outside the business.

 

Paging Ace...

 

Time for LeBron to come home and bring the Plain Dealer an APSE championship

 

Coffee shops? I love these job descriptions written by people trying to sound all hip and ... stuff.

 

Speaking of job descriptions written by people who don't actually know what they're on about:

The only one, huh?

 

There would seem to be so many requirements for generating data (can hardly call it copy) that there will be no time left for watching the games, let alone report on them.

 

This job has changed just a bit ...

 

Yes it has. It's become a big pain in the ***.

 

http://www.si.com/mlb/2014/07/13/media-circus-all-star-game-mlb-lebron-james-returns-cavs

 

Not sure if this is the same position or a newly created one, but here's one to be a LeBron James beat writer with Cleveland.com: http://neohiomediagroup.jobinfo.com/public/description.php?jid=9910442&refid=220