Qualities in hiring a beat writer

Hmm...

My recommendations are:

1) Someone who has experience covering a beat.
2) Someone who consistently beats deadline with strong copy.
3) Someone who can look beyond that game and provide analysis/context.
4) Someone who can dig for the story behind the story.
5) Someone who can establish strong relationships with athletes, coaches and staff.
6) Someone who can turn a phrase, but isn't too bogged down with play-by-play.

 

Having been a pro beat writer, in two sports, for a combined 19 years, I'd say you're looking for someone who's masochistic, but not quite suicidal, because that can create quite a mess, and then you have to go through all the hassle of replacing them.


More seriously, to all the go-getter, self-starter stuff that's true but really tiresome to talk about, I would add this: I try to build a relationship with the reader, a trust, that my analysis or perspective is honest and informed, that I'm not servicing an agenda. I try to be smart and clear-eyed about what the team and the agents are telling me.
I don't know if this helps you in the hiring process, but I think it's an important, underappreciated part of the job, which where I work does not involve breaking big news stories every day or even every week, most of the time. A lot of the job is "here is what this means," delivered so that your take is different/interesting, or the reader values your take more than someone else's.

And by the way, everything Forever said in the previous post is true, and probably more helpful in hiring than anything I said.

 

If all you have access to is one coach and one player, then I'd tend to agree. But if you are doing your job on your beat, you should have a good grasp of the whole staff and more of the team.

I hear where you're coming from with the column-advance-gamer-player feature rut. I've been there. But it's way more nuanced than that.
* In your notebook, are you just regurgitating SID notes and putting in the standard cliché notes (like series records, injury report, etc.) or are you getting some depth into the notebooks.
* Are your features just Johnny's-done-good player features, or are you getting good stories on things with more depth? How's the new defensive scheme coming? Maybe something on the former assistant for the team you cover who's now coaching the team they are playing. Something that's more than just standard stuff.
* Are your advances doing more than just saying there's a game that day and here's what's at stake?

You're not in a rut if you are limited to doing notes, features, columns and gamers/siders if your notes, features, columns and gamers/siders are better than your standard notes, features, columns, gamers/siders.

And if they are better than your standard stuff, that means you are doing what you are supposed to do on your beat. And if you are doing what you are supposed to do on your beat, that means, in the process, you'll have a chance to uncover some pretty good enterprise stuff in the process of covering your beat.

To me, any enterprise for a staff of limited size is something that has to be planned. You can't have a situation where, on one hand, people on the staff have no time for enterprise because they're caught up in the day-to-day. On the other hand, you can't have people on a small-to-mid-size staff doing nothing but enterprise work and using that as an excuse to push the day-to-day stuff off on everyone else.

 

I don't think breaking news is as significant as it used to be, because these days, breaking news usually means breaking a story online, which every other news outlet can typically confirm and run with in 20 minutes.

But I agree that most of the really good features develop from the nuts-and-bolts stuff.