High Schools in Dallas

This is a little different, and you get to work with citizen journalists. But a job's a job.

The Dallas Morning News currently has an opening for an Interactive Community Editor. This person is responsible for developing and executing new strategies to serve and grow local audiences and citizen contributions for HSGameTime.com, by making use of human and digital strategies such as community outreach and social media. This person will develop new ways of connecting with high school staff, sports coaches, players, fans and community; build those connections, spur a strong user-community that contributes to the product; determine which approaches work best for our audiences; and roll out proven techniques to the entire organization.

The ultimate goal is to produce the most popular site providing high school news and information to the localities we target, and to do so by pulling an ever-increasing stream of high school sports news, information, statistics and data commentary and dialogue from the community itself.

1) Minimum 1 year of Web work experience, preferably in user-generated content

2) Experience in reporting sports news, preferably high school sports

3) Ability to build rapport with networks of high school sports coaches, administrators, students and boosters.

4) Ability to work within and across departmental lines at TDMN.

5) Familiarity with the tools of civic and community journalism, or willingness to learn.

6) Familiarity with news media marketing and advertising issues, and/or willingness to learn.

7) Familiarity with Web content management systems and Web publishing.

8) Ability to work with HTML. PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, FTP, MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/job-J8QAZZ9NE6Z;_ylc=X3oDMTEwaW1udDRpBF9TAzM5NjUxMDMzNQRjYXQDTkVXBHBjb2RlAzUwNTg0?source=partner&scode=50584

 

Doesn't sound like a bad job at all. I might have to give this one a shot.

 

I don't claim to know anything about. Just found it in a random job search.

 

Translation: We can no longer afford the clerks to keep the site updated and so we need to let the coaches and moms do it for us.

 

Even if the job sucks, that's the sort of line on a resume that can keep your career going for a little while longer even if things tank.

 

We're trying to do this at my shop, but we're dealing with it with the staff we have. Essentially, we've streamlined through reverse publishing and the coaches still just call in games. It's hard to get a coach to do more than he already does. Your best bet trying to get coaches and parents to input things themselves is to tell new coaches that's how it's done and hope they don't ask around. Seventeen high schools in our area, seven baseball teams do their own stats. Every other team in every other sport still calls in.

 

This is the quandary with intensive prep sports coverage.

Media outlets see it as a possible "unique content" avenue, and a way to keep or gain strength in their areas. Done well, they are probably correct in that thinking.

But, preps are so labor-intensive and it takes so much time/longevity to truly build up sources, credibility trust and cooperation -- especially in expansive, far-flung areas -- that that focus and growth can't happen fast enough, or effectively enough, to satisfy editors'/publishers' desires, or papers' currently daunting financial needs of the moment. Therefore, newspapers, or even web sites, right now, don't really want to take the time or effort required to do the job well.

It is also difficult to keep good people in preps, particularly with the business in a frantic state in which everyone is trying to "race" -- such as it is -- out of sheer self-preservation and move on as fast as they can to a less lowly position, so as not to be left as the "expendable" people that prepsters are ultimately seen as simply by virtue of their status in comparison to, oh, just about any other beat.

The fact that preps, as great as they are when done well, has, heretofore, never done anything to land you at name Web sites like Yahoo! and ESPN doesn't help the situation, either -- especially because these places seem to be becoming practically the only ones left that are perceived as destination jobs out of newspapers.

With ESPN trying some regional development now, perhaps that will change slightly in the future. But, let's face it, any positives will still only benefit a small -- and still ever-contracting -- number of people in comparison to those currently employed in preps at newspapers.

Also, just like professional journalists, all the coaches, moms and pops that papers might want to use in such previously staffed roles quickly figure out that the work is not glamourous, or anything they'd really want to do for too long -- particularly when they don't even really work for the newspaper.