Sports writer, Amsterdam Recorder (Upstate NY)

From JJobs: http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=719749

Sounds ideal for a recent grad. Circulation is around 9,000.

The Recorder, an award-winning daily newspaper in Amsterdam, is seeking an enthusiastic and skilled full-time sports reporter to cover local sporting events and write features.

Generally, people in the Amsterdam area are passionate about local sports — the high school football team routinely draws 5,000 fans to a home game, and the Amsterdam Mohawks led the New York Collegiate Baseball League in attendance — and The Recorder is the primary source for local sports news.

Candidates must have a bachelor's degree and college, weekly or daily newspaper writing experience.

Candidates with photography and/or editing experience will be given preference.

Amsterdam is centrally located in upstate New York, 30 minutes west of Albany.

We offer a competitive salary and great benefits. For immediate consideration email your resume, cover letter and writing clips to Geoffrey Dylong, Director of News Operations, at geoff@recordernews.com. If necessary, mail your items to The Recorder, 1 Venner Rd., Amsterdam, NY 12010.

 

Whatever the anti-Moddy Seal TM would be, I would give it to this job. I applied for a news job just after graduation, was given a trial assignment: Cover a local parade. I did, they said OK, ran the story, but then they wanted to give me another trial. I was like, forget it. I felt like I was being used.
I don't know if sports would be different, but that was my situation.

 

Well, how adequate was your parade coverage?

 

Fine. It wasn't my first time writing for a daily newspaper, it was just the first job I had applied to out of school.

 

I interviewed here 15 years ago.

I can't speak how the paper is now. But Amsterdam is small and isolated. Whatever industry had been here had long shut down, and I remember that finding something to eat at 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon was a chore. I remember ending up at the mall, where only one of the four food court restaurants was open.

I think I was offered the job, but I turned it down. It might be the ideal place for some folks, but it wasn't for me -- I had lived for the three previous years in NYC and wasn't looking to live in a place that could have been the backdrop for a Richard Russo novel.

 

Define "competitive salary," somebody.

 

I remember reading on the old NewsMait site around 10-11 years ago that Amsterdam was the paper whose publisher fired the editor because the editor didn't attend the office Christmas party. Then the publisher wrote the editor a threatening letter saying that if the editor revealed why he was fired, that the publisher would ruin the editor's career.

Granted, it was 10-11 years ago, and I don't know who's there now. Just thought someone might be interested in the paper's past history.

 

Hey, it was good enough for Ed Harris and Joanne Woodward, dammit. ;D

 

Was the lede, "It was the best of parades. It was the worst of parades."