Community sports editor, Lawrence KS

In response:
1. One year covering nothing but youth sports is enough to drive one insane. If it's one month and then move up, that's another thing.
2. Papers ask employees to subscribe because they do count toward circulation figures. I have a subscription which I never pick up from my apartment building entrance. Because when I go to the office, I'll just pick up a copy there. But I have the subscription because the company encourages it.

 

I don't know if Keegan had much of a choice of jobs after ESPN 1050 cut him loose.

 

I don't find it difficult to believe that some college grads would want this job. It's Lawrence, which means that in time, you could be in line for a promotion to bigger and better assignments. No one's going to replace Gary Bedore's blanket coverage there, but they always need some sidebars on gamedays. It's not the worst place in the world to put a foot in the door, so long as the salary is decent. Cost of living in Lawrence can be pricy. Go figure, it's a college town with a lot of things to do.

 

Call me crazy, but I don't think this is the worst job in the world either. Yes, writing about youth league sports would get real old, but the appealing part to me would be that you pretty much have total control over the section. Show a prospective employer that you created this entire section yourself and I can't imagine them not being impressed -- not with the writing, but with the ability to handle a big project by yourself.

Also, being in a college town, there's got to be plenty of opportunities to freelance KU games. Between football and basketball, if you make the right connections, there's some good freelancing dough to make.

 

This is the weekly tab this person will be working:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/sports/game/

I don't believe the sports editor oversees Game. It is its own entity. In fact, I think it's more closely tied to the LJW's online ventures than it is the sports section.

If someone is looking to be the backup KU football or basketball reporter, this probably won't be it. There are other reporters that have those duties. Stringing could be an option, but aren't youth soccer games played on Saturdays in the fall like college football?

If you're looking for a nice place to live, you can do plenty worse than Lawrence.

 

This job won't include any KU coverage. If they even let you go to a Jayhawk softball game I'd be shocked.

 

With all due respect to others' opinions, I think this IS the world job in the world. After inexplicably forcing myself to read the 40-inch piece on sixth-grade knockout player Luke Matthews and glancing through a few other articles, I would dead-honestly rather be flipping burgers at McDonalds.


http://www2.ljworld.com/game/outstanding/2005/
Check out the audio section too.

EDIT: In one of the player's "Outstanding Effort Card," in the audio section, 11-year-old softball pitcher Meagan Dexter says, "Oh, and my name is spelled M-E-A-G-A-N. They keep getting that wrong." The interviewer says "In the paper?" She says "Yeah" He says he'll check out it. Sounds like that 11-year-old is in the paper quite frequently. All I have to say is "Wow!"

 

Say what you want about this, but this newspaper does one helluva job in the youth sports coverage area. I don't know if this is the path we are all headed down or not but I could see this as a cash cow in a lot of markets with the photo sales, charging for the "player cards" etc. It's sorta scary to see a newspaper this size devote the kind of resources the Journal-World has to T-Ball and I'd be interested to know what kind of revenue it generates. I could see in our market, for example, a way to use high school kids or early j-school students as stringers to do something like this on a weekly basis. What blows me away is the web site the JW has devoted to this section. On the one hand I look at this and go well, if this thing generated enough cash flow to ensure we can continue to cover the real sports like we have in the past then I'd be less likely to scoff at it. On the other MUCH BIGGER hand, I look at this and go THEY ARE COVERING @#$%&*@# T-BALL FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!! According to the web site, they've been doing this section since 2004. So almost 3 years of this tells me it's successful financially and that means others will be trying to duplicate it. So before anyone goes off on a rant about how you'd never be a party to something like this ... you just may be assigning that T-Ball art before you know it.

 

Question: does ANYONE, be they youth sport haters or youth sport advocates or whatever, think Lawrence is doing a good job with the stories themselves and that they're going about it all the right way? Photos to sell is one thing, but the stories are cringeworthy, and I wonder if anyone can justify them, regardless of how they feel about the concept of a weekly youth tab in general.

 

Wow, PE. For someone who keeps harping about how awful this job is and having no interest in it, you sure are devoting a lot of time to checking it out.

 

I think youth sports coverage is better geared toward the big-picture scheme: overbearing parents, are kids being pressured, the challenges of being a coach, etc.

Of course, parents only want to read "good news" about their kids/leagues, so you can forget about that stuff ever being a staple of one of these sections.

 

What can I say? It's addicting! : : :