Minnesota Timberwolves/GA reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press

http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=1528251

Openings in Newspapers/Wires

September 12, 2013

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Company: Saint Paul Pioneer Press
Position:
Minnesota Timberwolves/GA reporter
Location:
St. Paul, Minnesota
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Not Specified
Ad Expires:
October 17, 2013
Job ID: 1528251

Description:

Full-time reporter covering the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team and general assignment. Duties include but are not limited to breaking news, game stories, notebooks, features, enterprise, investigative, podcasts, blogs, social networking and backing up other beats/GA. The reporter will be the primary Timberwolves reporter during the season and offseason, keeping an eye on the rest of the NBA and trend stories, understanding that we generally do not staff road games. Otherwise, the reporter will back up other beats and be on general assignment.

Four-year college degree preferred.

Job requires experience in breaking stories, on the college or professional level. A strong knowledge of the NBA is a plus.

To apply: email Senior Editor/Sports Mike Bass at mbass@pioneerpress.com and include a resume, cover letter, references and 5-7 clips.

 

What happened to Ray? Kind of interesting they "generally" don't travel.

 

Ray Richardson retired or at least left the PP to focus on other stuff.
The PP does what it has to do on the Vikings and the Twins but tries to own the NHL Wild because the arena is in downtown St. Paul. It fails too because Russo from the other paper is the man.
It has downplayed its Timberwolves coverage for years, pushing hockey to forefront.

 

The fact that they push the Timberwolves guy to GA in the off-season sort of tells that story. The NBA season goes early fall to late mid-summer. Seems like, if the T-Wolves are a first-round playoff team, that gives a beat writer just a few months before camp starts again, right? Less if they ever get a team that'll make a deep run.

Between vacation and off-season news, when are you supposed to be GAing?

 

Why, during all those road trips you don't make with the team you're responsible for covering at a big league level, silly.

 

So you are basically the GA who will most likely draw the assignment to cover T-Wolves home games.

 

Quite disturbing that they don't cover road games. On the road is where you actually develop real relationships with players and coaches -- particularly if you run into them in the hotel restaurant during breakfast or lunch. Of course, with the financials of newspapers, picking up the tab for an assistant coach's or a player's lunch is pretty much forbidden. Which is why almost all the stories on local beats are now broken by "national" writers at ESPN and Yahoo and CBS and Fox Sports. Those stories are most likely to come from the source (Player or coach) first, and the agent second. Agents believe they get much more bang being tight with the national guys.

 

You're not for real if you opt out of covering properly one of the Big 4 sports in your market. This isn't a satellite city 70 miles from the pro market that drives in for home games. Maybe this is the start of daily metros covering their pro teams' road games off TV or via a network of stringers.

Actually, I think the latter approach could work if enough sports editors built a network, utilizing a spare body (scarce as they are) on game nights: you hire someone to give you tailored coverage but at a fraction of what airfare, hotel, ground transportation, meals and incidentals would cost. Of course, you don't build up familiarity/credibility with the sources, but you have a dedicated agent on site if there's a broken leg, a fight in the locker room, a postgame rant, a crazed fan, whatever. Your "beat person," sitting at home in front of the TV, can talk to the stringer earlier in the day to ID topics of interest/storylines. Then, when the game is in your town, your SE provides the spare staffer or suggests a freelancer.

 

Not the start.

Perhaps a resumption of something that used to be the norm.

The New York papers didn't cover Wilt's 100-point game against the Knicks, and the Philly Inquirer didn't, either.

When teams began moving to the West Coast, did newspapers regularly shell out $210 ($1,570 in today's dollars) for each coast-to-coast plane ticket, given the price of airfare before deregulation?

 

Problem is, your "dedicated agent" isn't someone that will be pulled aside and told about something like a fight in the locker room (assuming such fight occurred while locker room was closed).

 

Good point, old_tony. It would be an inferior second choice, but it would be better than going with wire copy or something written off TV. The papers that don't have traveling rivals -- one-paper towns like San Antonio, Milwaukee, Portland and so on -- could maybe get away with it.

Not an advocate, though I must admit the idea of sportswriters from all over the country jetting all over the country for 6-9 months every year seems awfully expensive for a business that is so cost-sensitive. I'd certainly expect others in newsrooms -- namely, those who don't travel on the company dime -- to suggest some sort of remedy like this to cut expenses.

 

You might think with staffs shrinking and travel budgets decreasing that would mean more reliance on freelancers for road games, but as a well-established longtime freelancer I can tell you that is not the case.

The fact is, freelance budgets are the first to go, before the travel budgets, even. It gets harder and harder every year to round up assignments for games. Outlets I've worked for for years are now telling me they can't hire anyone because they have no money for freelancers.

Nowadays, most places that don't travel just use the wire, or make some sort of deal with the one or two papers left that do send writers to road games.