Sports writer, Fort Wayne IN

Company: The Journal Gazette/Fort Wayne Newspapers
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Not Specified


Description:

The Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal Gazette, a morning paper with a 50,000 daily circulation and 90,000 Sunday circulation, has an immediate opening for a reporter covering a college beat and professional (minor league) baseball.
The ideal canddiate has at least a year of experience at a daily newspaper; can produce a mix of game stories, features and enterprise; show sound news judgment; and demonstrate an ability to engage readers daily with social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. The successful applicant will be our lead reporter covering Indiana University men’s basketball and TinCaps Low-A baseball.
Additional responsibilities include covering Indiana and Purdue football and women’s basketball. Strong communication and organizational skills are necessary. Posting and updating blogs daily and on game days as well as using Twitter is required.
Experience with videos is preferred. The Journal Gazette Sports Department covers Notre Dame, Indiana, Purdue, the Indy 500, Brickyard 400, several minor league teams and some 50 high schools in a nine-county region.
Send resume, a mix of six game stories, features and enterprise, online history and a cover letter explaining what you’d bring to a sports section to Mark Jaworski, Sports Editor, The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne, IN., 46802, or email the same materials to mjaworski@jg.net.

 

Send resume, a mix of six game stories, features and enterprise, online history and a cover letter explaining what you’d bring to a sports section to Mark Jaworski, Sports Editor, The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne, IN., 46802, or email the same materials to mjaworski@jg.net.

I can spell cand-dee-date and count to potato!

 

I wonder how well they actually cover IU. It doesn't look like the IU beat writer is based in Bloomington if this job also entails covering a baseball team.

Bloomington is about three hours from Fort Wayne, so what exactly does this beat entail? Going to games when they can? Every game? What do they do about press conferences and things like that?

 

An ambitious person, in my opinion, could do really well here.

The college beats here have been, at least in the past, commuting from Fort Wayne. Not sure if they would change that during basketball season now that Indiana is good at basketball again. But their beat guy has been at every home game and at least as of a few years ago, traveled to a decent amount of driving road trips.

 

Pete DiPrimio is tough competition on the IU basketball beat.

 

Does online history include tweets to a fake dead girlfriend?

 

What's Fort Wayne like as a town? And thank god for private browsing if they check your internet history. ;D

 

Ft. Wayne is your typical midsized Midwestern town. The downtown is decent, but not great. There's one or two blocks of good bars and restaurants and stuff. It is a very, very spread out town otherwise.

There's a nightclub there called Piere's, which is...interesting, but it is usually quite popular. Ron Artest, as a rapper, performed there.

Again, you could do a lot worse for a first (or second) job.

 

Piere's is generally awful, unless Gov't Mule is playing there.

FW has more than a quarter-million people, but it never seemed like a metropolitan area in any sense. Of course, any town is what you make of it. I liked the small-town feel. As was mentioned, it's very spread out, so you can either find a few pockets to your liking or experience the whole area as you so choose.

Also, Indy is a quick trip down I-69 and Chicago is not too far away, so that's a plus if you don't mind the occasional road trip.

 

Oh, Piere's is absolutely terrible. There are other good drinking establishments in the city, though.

EDIT: Louisville also isn't too far away (as another city) and the Fort Wayne airport connects to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and, I think, Atlanta.

If anyone has questions about Fort Wayne or the paper, shoot me a PM.

 

Yes, it is worth it to drive to Louisville to connect to Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indy, unless you take a look at a map and realize Louisville is further away than any of those cities.

 

It rains.