Job Description

Summary/Objective

The Bay Area News Group (Mercury News/East Bay Times) is seeking a high school sports beat writer. We are looking for a talented sports journalist who is able to provide quick game analysis in an hour or less as well as deep-dive enterprise suitable for our digital and print platforms. Our journalists work in real time, publishing words, sounds and images around the clock for millions of online readers and hundreds of thousands of people who read our daily newspapers. A large part of this job will be familiarizing yourself with the top teams and coaches in our coverage area and providing regularly-scheduled content such as rankings, athlete of the week candidates, roundups, and previews – proven winners for us on the metrics scale. Football is our primary focus from late summer through the early winter. It drives pageviews and subscriptions like nothing else on the high school beat. During football season, we give our readers something new every day in time for our 8 a.m. newsletter. In the winter, we mostly cover basketball. In the spring, we cover sports such as baseball, softball and track and field. This beat also provides opportunities for enterprise stories and in depth features that reach board audiences.

Essential Functions

• Provide concise, accurate game coverage.

• Write analysis that tell readers more than who scored and won.

• Produce compelling enterprise stories.

• Generate regular weekly content that readers will come to rely on like weekly rankings, roundups, athlete-of-the-week, etc.

• Regularly work nights and weekends

• Build relationships with the schools to bring in exclusive content and/or breaking news

• Meet deadlines

• Communicate with your supervisor and colleagues regularly

• Monitor your metrics and adjust your audience engagement strategy as needed

Competencies & Skills

• Knowledge of a variety of prep sports - football, basketball, baseball, softball, track and field, etc.

• Previous experience as a working journalist (college media experience is okay)

• Strong writing skills under deadline pressure

• Ability to juggle multiple stories of varying complexity

• Strong grammatical skills and a working knowledge of the Associated Press stylebook

• Proficiency at using social media to report stories and to share them

• Ability to find and develop sources within the organizations

• Solid sports news judgment

• Excellent communication skills regardless of the platform (i.e. in-person, Slack, Zoom, email, texts, etc.)

• Attention to detail and organization

• Ability to work harmoniously with other departments (i.e. audience, photo and print production teams)

Supervisory Responsibility

• N/A
  

Travel

• 10%

Required Education

• 4-year college degree (journalism or related fields)

Required Experience

• One year prior experience

Work samples must be included in your application for consideration.

Work Environment

• This job operates in a professional office environment and at the Company and client sites for business meetings and presentations. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines.

Physical Demands

• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms and requires the ability to occasionally lift office products and supplies up to 30 pounds.

Other Duties

• This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.