Sports Writer, Aiken, South Carolina

From JJobs.com... wonder what's so historic about Aiken?

Company: The Aiken Standard
Position: Aiken Standard Seeking Sports Writer
Location: Aiken, South Carolina
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Not Specified
Ad Expires: June 1, 2008
Job ID: 824197


Description:
The Aiken Standard, a 17,000 circulation daily in historic Aiken, S.C., is seeking a sports writer. The ideal candidate will be skilled in writing sports stories and features on a variety of athletic pursuits. InDesign (Quark acceptable), experience is desired but not required. This position will include reporting on high school and college sports in the area, designing pages and working to continue the strong product the sports staff has established. Interested applicants should send a resume and clips to sports edtior Cam Huffman at chuffman@aikenstandard.com

 

Historical events in Aiken (from Wikipedia)

In the spring of 1931, the nation's attention was riveted on Aiken when Nicholas Longworth, Republican Speaker of the House, came down unexpectedly with pneumonia and died there on April 9, 1931. He had been visiting family friends -- all long-time Republicans and fellow poker players -- who had a winter home in town. Longworth was married to US President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who rushed to his side from Cincinnati, Ohio, arriving prior to his death.
1951 to 1961 Savannah River in Aiken used as cooling by nuclear reactor weapon company
1948 Relocating People and Towns to build the nuclear facility
1950 Construction of the nuclear facility Begins at S.R.S
1951 Nuclear Reactors Built to Produce Tritium & Plutonium

 

Waht's an edtior?

 

Maybe it's some kind of new position, a five-tool player in the newsroom ...

 

Quick survey of the site shows three sports guys. Web site looks decent enough. Probably a nice place to cut your teeth, although I don't have any first-hand knowledge of the place.

 

Don't write sports, never worked in Aiken, but I've heard good things about the paper and some of their news editors. Hard-working paper, independently owned.

 

They produced William "Refrigerator" Perry AND The Big Show! That's pretty historic in my world.

 

The sports department there? Not so much anymore. Used to be very good, from what I gather from some folks with experience there. I think they had a long-time SE leave there recently and things in sports have been struggling since. I mean, keep in mind that "sports edtior" was misspelled in this job posting.

 

I'm pretty sure that is the historic way of spelling it.

They had an opening in the September.

 

A great area with a great sports scene, but a sports section severely lacking.

The SE did leave, jumping the river to the Augusta Chronicle, because management there blows. They've gone through a slew of people the last few years, and turnover there is high. You either move to another paper after a year or two, or you leave the business completely. Work conditions there stink. And the paper's quality isn't what it used to be.

Perfect example: A few years ago, the paper would send two writers to the Masters every day, and those writers would come back with six or seven stories, including 1A features and all of 1B.
This year, they sent two writers each day and they came back with two or three stories. The AP lead story was on 1B every day. Their Friday column in the paper -- after the first round of play -- was about the par-3 contest on Wednesday. This used to be a great small daily sports section. Not anymore.

 

As a former employee this is not a great place to work. There are some good folks there, but they will be at the same level you are.
The Executive Editor (Jeff) has questionable people skills and is really just a waste of a paycheck.
The ME runs the place and Tim does a good job but gets way to stressed out trying to make the paper into something better. He has done that from when he got there, but the place and the ideas have run soem good people off too.
When Larry (the old sports ed) along with a few others left, the section really nosedived.
If you take the job be prepared you will do it all from taking pics and laying out pages to burning plates at night. And you have not lived until you have had your arm almost elbow deep in developer in the plate machine, that crap does not want to wash off.
The good part is you do get to cover a variety of things. They have a huge youth soccer program and good rec sports (and you will cover rec sports, if you have any doubts, check out the 11 day special section put out a few days ago for the Dixie Youth Baseball World Series.) You will cover polo, and a good bit of golf along with youth swimming and all the normal high school things.
Also there is USC Aiken the Div II college. They are pretty good in baseball and womens basketball and they have won many National Championships in golf with mostly local talent. The baseball coach is a great guy, he is a first-class bs'er, but still a good guy.
Football is not bad in the area, and some of the players you see you will see playing at higher levels. Basketball is spotty at best, Silver Bluff was really good when I was there, but in that area the athletes move around a good bit.
The Aiken-South Aiken rivalry is real and the week of the game in football is a bit silly.
The best part of the job used to be covering golf though. You will cover good high school, Division II and some pro golf in the job. They do have Masters passes, but do not let them lure you with those because they might give one to the news side or just not use them sometimes. They used to have great local Masters Coverage, but of late that has fallen off as well and there is no reason for that since it is spring break and all the sports are off for a week in high school.
Not the worst job I have ever had, learned to do a lot, but be prepared to work long hours for little pay ( I know just like everywhere) and be prepared for the mindset of the town, they have one foot in the current world and one foot in 1830 and they like it that way.
If you have any questions feel free to pm I will answer what I can.

 

I know very little about the paper, but Cam is good people.