High school sports reporter — Memphis Commercial Appeal

The Commercial Appeal, an award-winning newspaper in Memphis, is looking for a sports storyteller who will take readers beyond the predictable to provide truly unique coverage of high school sports in the Memphis area which provide some of the top high school talent in Tennessee.


Our storyteller must be entrepreneurial, willing to take risks and innovative in story approaches on multiple platforms. Video skills is an absolute must along with handling different social media platforms. So is the ability to write enterprising stories.


Reporters interested in a traditional beat that entails primarily game coverage need not apply.


Qualifications:
Candidates will embrace the digital focus of our media company, have reporting and narrative writing experience, a four-year college degree and the ability to meet deadlines for a variety of platforms.

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A year ago while I was at loose ends, I would've jumped at this. I absolutely love Memphis. Great underrated city. And preps is up my alley, although hoops seems to prevail in the city.

 

CA had a few sports guy including Geoff Calkins leave for the Daily Memphian, a subscription based site that officially gets going tomorrow. Will certainly be competitive but Memphis is a great prep scene.

 

This was posted on Indeed two weeks ago.

 

I know some people that were at this shop and I've been told some interesting things that might make you cringe about this place.

First, their deadlines are 6 p.m. so they can't get anything in the paper unless it's played in the morning or early afternoon. High school football doesn't get in until Sunday. The Memphis Tigers don't get in if the game doesn't start early either.

This is why they have that bullshit language about the candidate needs to be an "entrepreneurial" story teller. Yeah, you damn right you're going to find some unique ways to tell stories about things you don't know or see.

Last I heard, they won't even send their preps guy out to cover a game of any kind. How the fuck do you write about something you never see or come in contact with? Features over the phone? Seriously??? WTF.

 

My adviser in college was an editor here, and left due to the crime — which has only intensified over the years.

 

What Doc says about the early deadlines are true. However, if I remember correctly their last guy got out to a good number of games. Now most of those were playoffs and marquee matchups (which there will be plenty in the city), but I felt John did a good job and didn't shortchange us on coverage so it's possible to come in and do a pretty good job. I’m sure he had his reasons for leaving though.

As for the crime, Memphis suffers like any big city, but for the most part it's pretty safe community especially if you're in East Memphis, Cordova, Germantown etc. The North and South are pretty grimy, but they're also locations where you'll seldom have to go too.

 

One thing that may be a warning shot … there is a new mid-level editor coming to Memphis from another Gannett shop, to start sometime in August.

At this other Gannett shop, he presided over the dismantling of sports, from 6 full-timers with a combined 120-plus years of experience, whittling it to a single sports writer who was hired while still a college student. He spearheaded that change, convincing his superiors that if the education beat has one writer, then the sports beat should have just one writer, too. He prohibited game stories, laid off all clerks, decided that some major events in the region were "not worth the time and expense" to cover, and when the metrics suffered as they decimated sports coverage, pointed to those metrics as proof they need to cut more and cut more.

I have no idea if he will be lording over sports in Memphis, but if he is, buckle up, because he will take his anti-sports crusade to the extreme.

 

One would think he'd be hard-pressed to repeat that in Memphis, with the Grizzlies, Tigers and the Cardinals' AAA team. I imagine they get Vols content from Knoxville.

Still, anyone who has been posting a while here has seen stranger stuff.

 

I'd hope it wouldn't happen again. And probably won't in the same scope.

But ... his former stop has Double-A baseball, a Division I university, a successful Division II university, a couple of NAIA schools, a hugely popular Champions Tour event, a Web.com stop and about 130 high schools.

Other than some sports with the D-I school, they basically ignore everything else. The Double-A team hasn't been covered in weeks (other than standings in agate, not so much even as a box score in 2 years), they used wire to cover the Champions Tour event a half-hour away, and they had close by high schools make state championship runs in football, basketball and baseball, with not a word about it.

For Memphis' sake, hope they keep him far away from sports.

 

FWIW- Sports coverage at the Gannett shops in Tennessee operate as a statewide vertical. Pro and preps coverage report to editors Nashville; colleges to Knoxville. I don't foresee a new editor in the building changing that.

 

Mark Giannotto took over Calkins' position as columnist, and the preps guy moved up to replace him on the Memphis Tigers beat. Thus this opening.