The Daily Commercial (Leesburg, Fla.)

The Daily Commercial, a 25,000 daily newspaper in Leesburg, Fla., is looking for a versatile sports writer/copy editor/paginator to complete our staff of three full-timers. High school sports are our focus, with select opportunities for college and professional assignments. We need someone who can handle a variety of tasks from writing gamers, features, advances, columns and enterprise stories to copy editing stories, designing pages and compiling agate and roundups. Experience on Quark or another page design system is a must. Please submit a resume, cover letter, references, no more than five writing samples and no more than five page design samples to: Adam Minichino, Sports Editor, The Daily Commercial, 212 E. Main St., Leesburg, FL 34748.

 

Isn't three full-timers kind of a small staff for a 25,000 daily?
Anybody know anything about the town or the paper? Seems like Leesburg is pretty small (16,000 population).

 

Leesburg=retirement town (yawn)...close to Orlando though...I live here in Orlando but have never dealt with the paper...nor have I heard much about it.

 

If I remember correctly, coverage area includes 10 public high schools (two in neighboring Sumter County), 2-3 privates plus a community college whose teams seldom contend. Some good prep baseball and basketball from time to time. Sentinel is a huge presence in Lake County. Bureau guy has been there almost 30 years.

 

I applied for and was offered a job here a couple of years back after nothing more than a phone interview with the incoming sports editor, who is no longer there (or at least not in charge).

Once they offered $18k to start, I told him to forget it. It would not have been my first job, and I would have been moving roughly halfway across the country. Dude knew this going in ...

Ever since, ads for positions in their sports department have routinely cropped up, all (until this one) stressing their desire for regional applicants only. :

 

18K to start for a daily that size? Sheesh .....

 

The paper is offering $23,000 for this current position ($11.04 / hour).

 

In Florida? Do you have to provide your own box to live in or does one come with the position?

 

23K outside orlando? what a f***ing joke! 23K would be hard to get by on most places these days. is that what our esteemed profession is coming to?

 

Some parts of Florida are not really that expensive. I'm sure you can find a nice mobile home next to a swinging senior for that amount of loot.

 

To update my previous post, the wage has been increased to $11.75 / hour.