Sports page designer in Florence, S.C.

The Morning News, a 40,000-circulation Media General daily in Florence, S.C., is looking for a lead page designer to join our staff of six full-timers and two part-timers. The previous designer has accepted a design position at a 100,000-circulation paper.

Duties of the lead designer will include designing, copy editing and paginating daily section fronts, inside pages and special sections. He or she will work slot or page help five days each week with an occasional writing day. Most nights, we have 2-3 staffers producing the section, so there is ample time to be creative with our design.

Our philosophy is to draw readers into our section through design, keep their attention with well-written copy and give them information they can use through breakouts and graphics.

While we strive to serve all readers, we especially want to catch the eyes of readers whose ages range from 15-40. Therefore, our lead designer must possess an innovative mind and not be afraid to take chances. He or she should be able to come to the table with ideas as well as take ideas from the sports editor and produce eye-grabbing, reader-friendly pages.

Candidates should have at least a year of sports page design experience, but talented college grads will be considered. Candidates should be able to step right into the position and design pages using Photoshop and Quark.

For a staff of six full-timers and two part-timers, we have a lot on our plate. Colleges we cover include South Carolina, Clemson, Coastal Carolina, South Carolina State, Francis Marion and Coker. We have 38 high schools in our circulation area, and we produce weekly prep pages for football, boys basketball, girls basketball, baseball and softball. We have a Southern Professional Hockey League team, an American Indoor Football League team and a Coastal Plain League baseball team. We also produce a weekly auto racing page, and a two-day wrap around the sports section for a NASCAR race weekend at Darlington in the spring.

Tabs we produce include prep football, college football, Darlington race weekend, SPHL hockey and golf.

Send resumes and work samples to:

Sam Bundy
Sports Editor
Morning News
310 South Dargan Street
Florence, S.C. 29501

Resumes, links to design work, design work as PDF attachments, and written work as Word attachments can be e-mailed to:

sbundy@florencenews.com

 

Where's Luke Reasoner headed?

Also, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, this paper's circulation is much closer to 30K than 40K.

 

Luke's been hired as a sports page designer/copy editor at The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C. Congrats to Luke.

 

Oops

 

You'd be about a 90-minute drive from Myrtle Beach at this place. The paper has seemed decent whenever I've passed through, but this is the most economically depressed part of South Carolina. Not much to do without driving to MB or Columbia (90 minutes in the opposite direction).

 

True, but there's a nice little watering hole called Spirits Lounge (just off i-95) where I have never failed to have a good time. 8)

 

Ah, minor problem...
On another note, there are some good people in Florence -- mainly reporter Lou Bezjak and desker Gabe Cornwall (although I wouldn't be surprised if either of them followed Luke out the door to another job; they are both pretty decent).
I don't know Sam Bundy from Ted Bundy, but any SE who starts a Sports Writer Idol is obviously up for trying new things.

 

Also,
Splitting hairs here, but it's 60 minutes to MB, tops.

May change during peak season, but I'd bet dollars to donuts you can make it to MB in an hour. And what the hell? Work in Florence five days, find some broad (or dude, if that's what you're into) to shack up with in MB the other two. I could think of worse ways to make a living. Ahem.

And from what I've heard, pay isn't the best in the world. But, Florence is pretty cheap.

 

UPDATE

For those interested, we have filled our sports page designer opening internally by moving our prep writer to the desk. We have also made a hire for the prep writer job that became vacant via the aforementioned move.

Sam Bundy
Sports Editor
Morning News