Sports Editor: Jacksonville (Texas) Daily Progress

From JournalismJobs:

Company: Jacksonville Daily Progress
Position: Sports Editor
Location: Jacksonville, Texas
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Not Specified
Ad Expires: September 5, 2008
Job ID: 958936

Description:
The Jacksonville Daily Progress has a lot to offer the true sports enthusiast: A 4A high school with rich football traditions and two former quarterbacks playing in the NFL; an area back-to-back state high school football champ; area high schools that go deep in the baseball/softball playoffs; and two junior colleges with basketball programs that make it to the national tournament. We're looking for someone who enjoys game coverage, but understands there are also great stories to be told about the people who play the game.

You'll be a one-man sports staff, with help from your publisher, editor and any stringers you can develop. We're a mid-morning 6-day daily in East Texas, with plenty of outdoors opportunities. Candidates should be well-versed in AP style, quark and photoshop. Send resumes to Richard Nelson at editor@jacksonvilleprogress.com or fax to 903-586-0987.
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1. CNHI paper
2. Pay will suck, but area is cheap to live. I would guess $25k at the very most.
3. Jacksonville is a pretty solid 4A program, but not great. You would also cover Alto, one of the more dominant 1A football teams in Texas history. The home of NFL quarterbacks Josh and Luke McCown -- but no athletes near that caliber nowadays.
4. You're about 30 minutes south of Tyler (100,000 population), two hours east of Dallas and three and a half hours from Austin.
5. Good tomatoes

I've never worked for the paper, but know a lot about it and the area. PM me if you have any questions.

 

Jacksonville's football stadium is named the Tomato Bowl.

Lots of work for low pay, but a great place to live if you're a Texan or enjoy the lifestyle.

Very hot, humid summers and occasional winter ice storms, but mostly pleasant weather eight or nine months of the year.

 

Strange officiating calls are known to occur in the Tomato Bowl.

 

Can't say much about the paper as I've never worked there. But the area is decent, down home folk. Excellent tomatoes, and some nice onions, peaches and blueberries to be found locally.

Oh but unless they've done some renovating to the Tomato Bowl the press box is a bit pathetic. I covered a game there in the mid 1990s and was relegated to basically a school desk because the front row was filled. Very strange.

 

The Tomato Bowl is one of the most historic stadiums in Texas, built by the WPA in the 1930s. It has a rock wall that completely encircles the stadium, which by the way is located directly across the street from the newspaper office. Jacksonville is a solid town, around 10-12K with the usual haunts and some nice hometown places to eat great Mexican and southern cooking.

It is CNHI, which most of East Texas is these days. I worked for CNHI for 9 of the most hellish months of my career at a neighboring paper that is no longer part of that crap chain. Don't know any specifics about the Jville paper anymore except that the guy who was here has taken the Sulphur Springs job. For someone who's ready to run a small section, maybe move up from a weekly, this would not be the worst place to be. One of my good friends in the biz is the SE in nearby Athens and the CNHI chains in East Texas help each other out, so you don't have to travel that much.

 

If you're referring to the same Athens SE I'm thinking of, he is indeed a great, great guy.

I think the bigger draw for this job would be covering Lon Morris College and Jacksonville College. They play in probably the best JUCO men's basketball conference in the country. LMC had a bad year last year, but two years ago they finished 7th out of 12th in the conference in the regular season, then used homecourt in the conference tournament to win it. They finished 6th at the national tournament after a 17-13, 10-12 regular season.

By the way, it's 100 in Jacksonville right now. It's 106 a half hour east in Henderson.

 

Region 14 is, indeed, very solid. It's expanded now, too, to include Bossier-Parish and maybe another school or two...could be mistaken about anything other than Bossier, though. They also broke the Region into two divisions, as well. Strong, strong league with San Jacinto, Tyler, Paris, Angelinga, Navarro, Blinn...etc.

 

bi-lingual candidate preferred

 

I'm not totally sure about how the divisions are broken down, but I know that Panola, Bossier Parish, Kilgore, Tyler, and Paris are together in the North.

Angelina, Lee, Blinn, San Jacinto, and Lamar-Port Arthur (the other newbie along with Bossier Parish) are all together in the South.

That leaves Trinity Valley, Navarro, Lon Morris and Jacksonville as the other four. LMC's A.D., who is also the men's basketball coach, threatened to leave the league if he got sent South. I wanna say that happened, and that LMC and Jacksonville are in the South, and Navarro and TVCC are in the North.

EDIT: Lon Morris didn't follow through on its threat, though. Also, LMC and Jacksonville are the only two in the league that are private. LMC is Methodist and Jacksonville is Baptist (not Southern, I think Missionary). LMC has far more funding and plays in a good facility. Jacksonville's facility is a nightmare.

 

I can't even begin to decide which division should be better this season. Each are very difficult.

 

Yeah, it's difficult to determine which division will be better. However, what I tend to do when there's not a clear frontrunner going into a season, I just bet on San Jac being good. They're the 800-pound gorilla in this league.

 

You're right, San Jac is the historic league power, but in recent years, I think Tyler and Paris have caught up. You can, however, always count on San Jac to be strong.