Sports Reporter - Southern Rhode Island

From their Facebook account:

This is the former paper for several people here, and I used to freelance for them shortly after my undergrad days. The job isn't posted on JJobs or anywhere else, and I'm assuming it's because they're cheap. Let's go over the pros and cons, and I'm sure some others might chime in:

+ People who have had this job have gone on to better ones. The most recent person got a good job up in Maine, I believe, still doing sports.
+ You do get a decent amount of autonomy...
- ... but that's because most of the people who are "supervising" you know absolutely nothing about sports.
- There will be very, very, VERY little support for you. Meaning, I don't believe they employ copy editors anymore, and I believe you're also responsible for your own pagination. This goes for whether you're a news editor or sports reporter there. There are two other sports reporters employed by the chain; one is energetic but normally in a different area of the state, and the other is fresh out of college.
- They value fitting in over doing good work. In the past 3 years, they've not supported people who have won awards, but they've steadfastly stood by and still employ a reporter who was caught plagiarizing multiple items.
+ / - The news product that the entire chain puts out is dreadfully bad, between the aforementioned credibility problem and the lack of proper editing. However, the sports sections are still seen as good products.
- No pay is listed, but it's probably around the $20k to $23k range. Others would know this better than I.

 

Hold up. Rhode Island is big enough to be broken into regions?

 

Piggybacking off of SGreenwell...I freelanced for this organization for several years in college. The teams are great (there's always a couple of teams fighting for state titles every season) and there is also the D1 University of Rhode Island.

However, the most recent editor, who just went to Maine, did a real lot with a real little. The editor before him won numerous awards and was dropped out of nowhere one day.

Last thing, I loved the area. If you're a beach and outdoorsy person you'll love it in southern RI. However, the cost of living down there isn't cheap.

 

You know it's a high-quality news organization when they advertise the position on their Facebook page - which has 1,281 followers - and not even on Craigslist, nevermind an actual professional jobs site.
Having worked their for nearly six years before being dismissed last year, PM with any details.
I'll give you the idea of an answer now. When I was there I was the highest paid non-editor making $12.50 an hour. If they're advertising the position as an "entry level" spot, don't expect anywhere near that.

 

Maybe your issue was copy editing?