Seeking a talented sports writer

Are you ready to launch your sports writing career at a daily that places a premium on good work, strong work ethic and talent?

The Greenwood (S.C.) Index-Journal, a small community six-day daily, is looking for a talented, energetic and aggressive sports writer to join its award-winning team.

We’re no second-rate publication. We take pride in our work, and it shows in the number of S.C. Press Association awards we have received through the years. And that includes numerous awards for sports feature and news writing. We cover a dozen schools — public and private — and have two colleges we regularly cover, Lander University and Erskine College. Sure, football is king just as it is anywhere in the South, but we don’t ignore the other sports, and there’s plenty to be covered. There is plenty of talent in our schools to supply a good flow of feature material. Look, folks can get the game score just about anywhere at any time. What they cannot get anywhere else are the deeper dive features and gamers that are more than nuts and bolts.

We’re a family-owned newspaper, which means we don’t have the layers of corporate executives to wade through. Have we been immune to economic issues and the pandemic? Of course not, but we recognize that solid local content is what brings readers back to our newspaper and website. We want to challenge the regular parameters attached to small papers. We believe the best way for a newspaper to succeed in this economic climate is to put out the best product possible.

The ideal candidate must understand local sports matter and be able to convey that through stories and photos. He or she must also understand the importance of digital-first journalism, using social media and video to tell their stories. The ideal candidate must be aggressive, creative and thorough. Key ingredients are pride in work and a passion for journalism.

We’ve hired journalists from California to Florida. Our hires have had degrees from Missouri, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Ohio, Northwestern (master’s degree) and Georgia (master’s degree).

If you think this sounds like a good fit for you, and you have the desire to help us continue our award-winning, public-serving publication, let us hear from you. Now’s the perfect time to get on board and kick off that sports career.

If interested, send a cover letter, résumé, at least five clips and references (via regular mail or email) to:


Richard Whiting
Executive Editor
P.O. Box 1018
Greenwood, SC 29648
rwhiting@indexjournal.com

No phone calls, please.

 

I do appreciate the two (plus one) thumbs up and see that we are fast approaching the 1K view mark. Now, folks, it's time to turn some of those views into application submissions. As a small daily, this is a great place for you to build those clips and shine a light on yourself with some state press association awards before you head up and out. I've had sports writers come and go, but most have gone for all the right reasons: new challenges wrought by successes built here. Who knows, but you could hone your skills here and wind up as theathletic.com's Oakland A's reporter. It's happened.

 

Richard, if I was about 35 years younger I would jump all over this. But I’m retired. Good luck in your search.

 

Never too late, Tarheel, to dust it off and begin anew.

 

Very strongly recommend working at the Index-Journal. My three years at the I-J were very memorable. Richard is a great boss, and you can do better work here at a family owned paper that treats its employees right than you can anywhere else in the country. I worked at the I-J during the pandemic and always felt secure to stay in my position and continue working hard. These are not things you find at other papers.

BTW, Richard, how about we update the listing to say you've had a hire with a degree from the greatest j-school in the country, KANSAS. Haha, jk

Feel free to message me with any questions and I will be happy to answer.

 

Thanks, Skylar. Appreciate the props (I'm trying to sound younger than I am). And yes, I totally forgot to mention Kansas. Consider it mentioned.

 

I appreciate the visits to my posting, as well as the nice words from folks. Now, I should let y'all (hey, it's South Carolina, so ...) know that the position has been filled. What's more, we snagged a local guy for whom this will be a sort of homecoming. Without the crown, of course.