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Sports Opening - Columbus, IN

Discussion in 'Journalism Jobs' started by Andre Dawson Fan, Jul 17, 2006.

  1. Andre Dawson Fan

    Andre Dawson Fan New Member

    This was on journalismjobs.com ....

    Description:
    Sports Writer: Feature-oriented writer for a 3-person sports department. Familiarity with participant sports, willingness to push away from game story, play-by-play and toward reader involvement in the sports section. Includes desk work. Daily experience vital. Night and weekend work for 26,000 a.m. daily. Send cover letter, resume and feature clips (no game stories) to Bob Gustin,Managing Editor, The Republic, 333 Second St., Columbus, IN 47201 EOE
     
  2. Candy Cane Stripes

    Candy Cane Stripes New Member

    Heard this is a nice little gig. Word on the street is that they cover some Colts, Pacers, Hoosiers, etc. Does anyone know any specifics about this job? Or any of their current writers?
     
  3. JB20

    JB20 Member

    I don't know much about the job, although when I was there a few years back I know they covered the Brickyard 400. Tony Stewart is from Columbus.

    My mother grew up in Columbus, so I've spent quite a bit of time there. It's a great town. Its architecture is its selling point. It's also less than an hour from Bloomington and Indianapolis.
     
  4. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Used to work there.

    SE has a great head on his shoulders, he replaced some dickhead who has probably moved on to cleaning toilet seat covers at Wal-Mart. Section has done very well in recent years. Newstoom morale is apparently much better than it was when yours' truly roamed the halls (when the kind of cuts the rest of the business is now making were made).

    The EE (who is not who this job app goes to) is an ex-SE from back in the 70s. He is notorious state-wide for being a hard-ass and for riding herd on sports departments, and to some extent, it's deserved.

    But if you can deal with that, and a lot of criticism, you will learn a helluva lot from him. I liken it to playing for Bob Knight, it's not an experience I'm particularly keen on repeating, but I respect the hell out him for putting me in situations I could later apply later in my career at bigger places.

    Parent company? Not a big fan, but it's not JRC or anything.

    Columbus? Let's get one thing straight. The architechture is neat to visit, but unless things have changed drastically, a nice-looking building isn't going mean there's five decent restaurants in town. Of all the stops in my career, Columbus was most underwhelming. But in saying that, understand it's not by any means horrible, and understand that, yeah, I'm kind of a snob! And as in most areas of Indiana, a major advantage is that it's dirt cheap.

    Get ready to have fun with Tony Stewart too. When I was there Columbus was ambivalent at best towards him (remember that he rebuked Columbus early in his career, the Rushville Rocket, etc.), now they embrace him. They've staffed him a few times in his Chase/Winston Cup title runs. Personally, I think Stewart is an almighty cocksucker, but whatever.

    Not sure what coverage policy on the Colts, Pacers, IU, Purdue, etc., is these days. When I was there, we covered them all, but they were attempting to consolidate coverage within the chain when I left, so I'm not sure how much of that they still handle.

    One "fun" side note: the building is open on all sides with near-two story tall windows. Partially because of that, the smells from the rendering plant two blocks away tend to linger in there if the wind is blowing wrong. It's particularly bad at this time of year on humid summer nights. To replicate the olfactory sensations, crawl inside a Port-A-Potty at a Mexican food festival, wait for the fat, black kid from Old School to take a dump and proceed to place your nose in his rectum. That's almost as bad.

    And I don't know if its the smell or proximity to the White River, but there were also these enormous hissing cochroaches that infested the building. Fuckers -- probably three or four inches long -- were sneaky and elusive as hell. Tough too. I threw one of the city planning books on one of them once, it took a direct hit. I picked up the book, and it was unharmed, and looked at me as if to say,"That's all you got, bitch?"
     
  5. DyePack

    DyePack New Member

    Did they design pages?
     
  6. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    I designed a page or two when I was there, and I'm sure someone at some point has referred to me as a cochroach.

    Though if they did, I would hope they did with a Tony Montagna accent, "Bubbler ... that cock-a-roach!"
     
  7. JB20

    JB20 Member

    This is saying nothing for the papers of these towns ...

    but as far as a place to live, Columbus beats the hell out some places in Indiana ... Terre Haute, Evansville, Fort Wayne come to mind.
     
  8. DyePack

    DyePack New Member

    Not debating that, but did the death trap that is Indiana 46 get improved?
     
  9. lennysakata

    lennysakata New Member

    Long time reader, first-time poster.

    I'm not sure who Bubbler is, but his thoughts are pretty accurate. I worked there several years back and was a victim of the mentioned downsizing. So maybe I've got an axe to grind, but so be it . . .

    The editor can be very hard on sports, and don't expect him to always be fair or consistent. My 6-month job review was positive and included a raise. My 12-month review was harsh, had no raise, and every single negative thing mentioned occurred in the first six months, yet was not on that review.

    A few months before I was let go the publisher had a meeting with the entire staff extolling the virtues of their small, family-owned chain vs. the corporations. Well, the family chain laid me off but I haven't had that problem in a bigger company. (cross my fingers)

    They went big on features shortly before my departure, and it sounds like they still are. Don't expect all your features to look really great when they put about a 3 col. by 10-inch ad on the sports front every day.
     
  10. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    I was pretty involved in the consolidation attempt with a former SE and the current SE at another chain paper ... it's not necessarily a "consolidation" as it is joining forces. Basically, we'd have three newspapers cover a game, share stuff, and come out of it with a gamer, two sidebars and a notebook (and some pretty good coverage for smaller newspapers).

    Unless they're restructuring, this person will probably cover the Colts. The other writer on the 3-man staff covers colleges, and the former SE used to handle the Tony Stewart beat ... I'm not 100% sure if that's still the case. Deadlines make it difficult to cover the Pacers, so I think they tend to borrow a lot of that from another newspaper in the chain. You'll also have opportunities to cover racing. The paper primarily covers three high schools (plus some fringe coverage of regional schools), and usually divvies them up between the three writers.

    SE is a good guy, a longtime desker who recently moved over to sports. The other writer is a recent IU grad who seems to have some talent.

    Newshole will be limited, and the design needs some work (though, as someone else pointed out, it's very difficult to design a page with gigantic quarter-page ads on the front). The section will occasionally be bumped inside a section so the feature page can get a page front, too. It's not a bad section, but then you'll look at the neighboring 18K in Franklin -- same chain -- and be *really* envious when they're getting 5-6 pages for sports and you're getting 2-3 with a big ad on your section front.

    They recently did a big readership survey and, at least according to the EE and publisher's speech to our staff a couple of months ago, seem to be *very* married to it. They're really pushing stuff that might be appealing to women (because they buy the paper), participatory sports, online stuff and a lot of techno-multimedia stuff to cross-pollinate with the website (which is, of course, a subscriber-only deal).
     
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