Sports designer/copy editor, York, PA

Website: http://www.yorkdispatch.com

Description:

The York Dispatch, an award-winning newspaper in southcentral Pennsylvania, is looking for a sports page designer/copy editor. The ideal candidate will have an eye for detail, the ability to work with little supervision and experience with InDesign and AP style. This is an 11 p.m.-7 a.m. Sunday through Thursday position in a Guild newsroom. The York Dispatch has won numerous APSE awards over the past two decades and is a five-day-a-week afternoon newspaper in a competitive two-newspaper town. Recent journalism school graduates with campus newspaper experience will be considered. Send resumes and clips of page designs to Steve Heiser, Sports Editor, The York Dispatch, 205 N. George St., York, Pa., 17405, or e-mail sheiser@yorkdispatch.com

 

All night desk job eh? That must not be too fun, unless of course, that's a typo.

 

That seemed a little odd to me as well. Maybe someone will step in and explain if that's the case.

 

It's an afternoon paper, it says.

 

Riptide is correct. The Dispatch is an afternoon publication.

 

A friend of mine once worked at a PM paper and loved it. He said he could edit and lay out the entire section in about 3 hours because all of the copy was already in and there wasn't any guesswork over whether a game would go overtime and you'd only get four inches instead of the 20 you had budgeted. With very rare exceptions, it was simple: edit the text, write the headlines, slap it on the page and be done with it. Plenty of time to be creative with layouts, graphics and other bells and whistles.

Guy throws a no-hitter on the west coast that ends at 1 a.m.? No problem. Optional lead, multiple photos, breakout graphics, boxscore, all the trimmings without having to rearrange your section at the last second.

Plus, the office was quiet, phones weren't ringing and you could just sort of zone out and get the job done in half the time it normally takes.

 

Last I knew, many years ago, the desk worked standard second-shift hours.

The circ has been sliding big time for the past 10 years or so; until then, it was the bigger of the York papers. Now it's at 22k, so who knows how much longer it'll remain viable. Steve is good people, though.

 

is this a new opening or is someone leaving? Always heard good things about Steve.

 

Understatement about the slide Wicked. I'd say more like 20 years and counting. They've been hit hard but still have loyal base. The problem is that the base is dying off. They need an infusion of new blood in terms of ideas and talent to remain viable.