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Do news jobs get as many applicants as sports jobs?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by WaylonJennings, Oct 31, 2007.

  1. I'm curious about the dynamics of this. Every time there's a job like the Virginia Pilot, we talk about how they can expect 300 resumes, and that's a conservative estimate. Does a paper get the same number if they post an education beat or health beat or cops beat or GA news position?

    Some of you have been hiring editors in both sports and news. What's your experience?
     
  2. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    Perhaps because of the nature of the job we've advertised (when our publisher and CEO will LET me hire someone damnit!), I get a LOT of applications. Then again, my paper is usually the first journalism job for people right out of college. They're people who are looking to get in the door in journalism so they'll take whatever stories I can assign them, sports or otherwise.

    I don't know, so I'd appreciate more experienced people correcting me on this notion, but I would think the majority of beat writer applications would be people who have entry level experience or have been either freelancers or GA reporters who are looking for a beat. However, I don't know if they would be as numerous as sports applications.
     
  3. I highly doubt it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure landing a news job is competitive. But there are more jobs to be had. When I've applied for jobs, I've often sent out resumes for both since I have experience on both sides. I seem to get more interviews for news jobs, even though I have more experience in sports.
     
  4. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    Wrong, Rick. I hired in both news and sports. The adage of "10 people lined up behind you to take your job" was just as true in news. More so for reporting and design jobs, perhaps a bit less so for copy editing gigs.
     
  5. OnTheRiver

    OnTheRiver Active Member

    I'm a features editor. Last open job I had garnered about 110 applications. That's for a sub-100K daily.
     
  6. Cansportschick

    Cansportschick Active Member

    The market I live in is very small. I know that one daily newspaper in the capital city gets three times the applicants for their sports department than their news department.

    They whittle down the applicants by the samples that are submitted with the application.

    It is very hard to get into sports rooms here.
     
  7. Flash

    Flash Guest

    The trouble with sports positions is that every looser fanboy thinks he can do the job. A former boss once confided in me the resumes he had received for the job with which I was rewarded. The cover letters, with their misspellings and sentence structures, would curl your hair. But the applicants knew sports so they were the best ones for the job!
     
  8. Cansportschick

    Cansportschick Active Member

    Yeah, misspellings and improper grammar on a cover letter is a bad first impression when applying for a journalism job.
     
  9. henryhenry

    henryhenry Member

    define fanboy....
     
  10. I must work at a shitty paper. When I left my cops job, I was asked to meet and greet the candidates, take them to lunch, blah blah. I only did it twice because that was all the qualified applicants from a stack of seven resumes. We had trouble filling the other sports position, and of the 20 to apply for desk chief, none are qualified enough for an interview, so it's gone unfilled for months. Journalistic poison, I guess.
     
  11. Flash

    Flash Guest


    Admitted to being a big fan of the local junior hockey club ... was a dishwasher at one of the local restaurants ...
     
  12. RossLT

    RossLT Guest

    I live in a shitty town and work for a decent paper, 18K. We had a news job opening and the ed-in-chief told me we got like 8 apps for it. When the sports gig that I got opened about 18 months ago they got like 40.
     
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