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Sports Editor, Valdosta, Ga.

Discussion in 'Journalism Jobs' started by rat fink, Dec 9, 2007.

  1. rat fink

    rat fink New Member

    Unfortunately, the chhis and jrcs of the world are the only ones with help wanted signs. While they aren't the best places for employment, it beats being unemployed.
     
  2. novelist_wannabe

    novelist_wannabe Well-Known Member

    Look, if you judge the goodness of a job by the stuff you cover, then it seriously won't get much better than this. If you judge it by prestige, pay or employee treatment, it's probably going to fall short of your expectations. Valdosta may very well prove me wrong on this point, but if I were going to apply, I'd have my eyes wide open.
     
  3. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    As I recall, the last time this was "open" -- in the sense that there was a thread on the jobs board -- they apparently told their finalists they weren't going to hire a sports editor...they'd just have two sports writers, presumably to save on the expense of paying someone extra.

    As cost-cutting measures go, that's pretty ridiculous.
     
  4. redsox99

    redsox99 Member

    As a former cnhi employee, my advice would be to stay far, far away from those folks. For those who think cnhi beats unemployment, I'd rethink that.
     
  5. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    i know after working for cnhi for awhile, my buddy now speaks highly of gannett and would take a job at one of its papers in a heartbeat and feel good about it.
     
  6. BTW, is this Christian Malone's gig being advertised here, our is he still in Valdosta?
     
  7. He's still there and there are two other writers at least.
     
  8. shortstop

    shortstop New Member

    Do not apply for this job! In my opinion, it would be a real mistake.
    I'm another person who has worked in sports at that paper, and I don't recommend going after the sports editor job. This is one of those jobs where they will work you to death (expect 60-plus hour work weeks during football season, and weeks where you work six or seven days, with no overtime pay, of course), and then when you give them 60 hours, they will expect more. You are essentially expected to produce as much or more copy than your writers, work desk most nights, be the de-facto copy editor and handle all the other duties of the sports editor. And the pay can't be that good, considering it's only 20,000 circulation and it's CNHI.
    As has been said many times before on this message board, CNHI ranks near the bottom as far as employee satisfaction. They are cheap, too. As an old friend told me after a month of working at another paper after leaving a CNHI paper he'd been with for many years, "It's good to know there are still papers that treat their employees right."
    The sports are definitely great, the city is nice, and I met a lot of nice people living there. Still, I would not recommend applying for this job at all.
     
  9. Scrubs

    Scrubs Member

    As someone who started his career in Valdosta, it's rough to hear such things. I really enjoyed my time down there.
     
  10. InDaBoonies

    InDaBoonies New Member

    Valdosta is a great town with great football. But since this is a CNHI gig, do they have a staff equipped to cover Valdosta State the coverage it deserves? I would hope this paper has a beat writer for its local DII college. If not, that's a shame.
     
  11. Shifty Squid

    Shifty Squid Member

    I can vouch for this. They told me exactly that when I interviewed. I think that was around the summer of 2005, so good memory Wingman.

    Had they hired me, I would have been their third sports writer with the ME basically acting as a de facto SE. They had already been working without an SE for several months at that point.

    The two writers seemed cool enough. I got a chance to sit down with them for 45 minutes or so and pick their brain about the gig. They acted unconcerned about the prospects of continuing to work without an SE, but I didn't like the idea myself. I called the ME after I got back home and took my name out of the running.
     
  12. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    When I was last there (which was nearly 5 years ago), the SE covered Valdosta State as his primary beat. Football got covered home and away, and he traveled to a handful of key hoops and baseball games (including all postseason). I think they've cut back drastically on travel since then however.
     
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