Sports reporter, Bluffton, S.C.

Bucknutty, you were looking at some blog writeups of the games by readers. As much as we're encouraged to be a booster of the community, I know we've never ended gamers with "GO BOBCATS".

Re: Barsuk, it's been a one-person sports department at BT since the paper's inception in April 2005. So I'd suspect any other input on this would be from our competition (a unique situation in and of itself with two 20,000-ish dailies covering a metro area of about 40,000). As for that input, buyer beware. If I'm wrong, Barsuk, please PM me.

I won't give you sugary, blinders-on praise of Morris, but I also know our competitor has proven to be classless more times than classy.

 

Gotcha. Didn't mean to imply anything negative upon the paper itself. I was fairly certain I was reading some sort of blog. My point was that I hope the future isn't a place where people read blogs and assume they are news. Egads, it's already happening.

Great-looking site, BTW. Very interactive and exciting.

 

Sorry, Barsuk. Yes, a little paranoid. It's just been an especially bad week in the ever-evolving McClatchy-Morris pissing match in Bluffton. One thing any applicant needs to know is they're walking into a stupidly cutthroat battle around here where McClatchy has owned the market and Morris is the upstart. On the sports side, the cutthroat crap has been all McClatchy. It's petty and it's unprofessional and it's worse in a lot of ways than what I experienced between the Post and Daily News in NYC. The idea of friendly competition is non-existent here.

No matter how our HR folks posted it, it's definitely more a job for a recent college grad. The identity is pretty well established - we're a names-and-faces community paper focused on (wait for it ... publisher-speak) hyper-local coverage of the fast-growing Bluffton market. We cover the high school sports scene like a college program, because there has been no college in the area. That's changing now as the USC offshoot has gone to a four-year program and will start athletics in the fall with golf and cross country and 10 more sports to come in '08 and beyond.

It's a free daily that is delivered to every home in Bluffton. I know we're all freaked out by the four-letter F word, I know I was to start. But the paper has become a financially well-rooted part of the community in a short time. The advertising carries us, but we're not a shopper. McClatchy is newsier overall for sure, but on the sports side, we have had our fair share of scoops thanks to a lot of pavement pounding to establish relationships with sources.

Again with the corporate horn-tooting, BT has the highest read-through rate in the country - 97 percent of those surveyed say they read the paper daily. Our research big wigs have the stacks of independent research, I just know what I see out and about. People read the paper, they interact extensively on our blogs. And our editorial staff has a heavy presence on the blogs - something that might take some getting used to for some, but has proven to be an incredible resource for leads and relationship building for me. This is far from a desk job - your headshot will be in the paper almost daily and you'll be expected to be out of the office more than in it.

I think it's a good starter spot, for sure. I have worked for 150,000-circ. Northeast dailies in the past but fell out of love with the industry for a while and was excited by the increasingly rare chance to be part of a from-scratch paper launch. We have found our audience and filled a need, but two years in, there's still plenty of evolving going on.

Savannah is our parent paper, Jacksonville is in the chain as is Augusta and Athens, Ga. in University of Georgia country. So the chances of internal advancement are strong.

The area is laid back and beautiful. It's the South Carolina Lowcountry and if you're from up north, it will feel like the Slowcountry. But the weather is gorgeous year round and there's inifinite golf courses and beaches here. Good place to start a family, and Hilton Head is 10 minutes away and Savannah 20 minutes away for the singles scene.

Again, Barsuk, sorry for the paranoia. Long week.

 

I'm at a loss to understand why the sports editor of Bluffton Today seems to believe he can recruit a reporter to his staff by taking thinly veiled swipes at my staff at The Island Packet, aka, the competitor that has "proven to be classless more times than classy." A wise man once advised you cannot sling sh*t without getting some on yourself, so I won't respond in kind. However, I believe I have an obligation to my employers — and more importantly, to my employees — to vigorously defend the quality of the work we do and the professionalism with which it is executed. I've sought high standards for our section and our conduct, and I'm proud of both. I have a group of talented, conscientious staffers who focus diligently on our readers. Suffice it to say, I take exception to the vague, unprovoked criticism leveled at them (and at me, for that matter.)

I wish Bluffton Today's managers the best in their search for a new sports reporter but respectfully request that, where their recruiting efforts are concerned, they demonstrate a bit of the class they so breezily accuse us of lacking.

Jeff Kidd
Sports editor
The (Hilton Head) Island Packet

 

Jeff, don't waste your time, dude.

 

Both of Island Packet and BlufftonToday have pluses and minuses. As far as swipes are concerned, the two papers have been snipping at each other for quite some time. Personally, I'm glad to see the competition. It's what's missing in journalism.

 

pissing matches aside, the web format is pretty cool.

 

No, Jeff. Really you didn't. We took the potshots with a grain of salt, just as we take the defenses.