Sports Writer, Devils Lake [ND]

Company: Daily Newspaper
Position:
Sports Reporter
Location:
Devils Lake, North Dakota
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Negotiable
Ad Expires:
July 2, 2008
Job ID: 571106

Description:
Help Wanted: Sports reporter. Immediate opening. Duties include features, pre-game stories and game coverage. The right candidate will have excellent interviewing skills and the desire to aggressively cover the local teams. Good paginations skills a must. Beautiful community on lake, a hunting and fishing paradise! 5 day daily, but does require night and weekend work. Excellent benefit package available. Please apply online through JournalismJobs.com and include salary requirements.

Sounds like a great place to live, eh?

 

So, over/under on when it strictly becomes Lake, N.D.?

 

Not too long ago, the high school teams there were called the Devils Lake Satans, which was great.

That changed to the Firebirds in the early part of the decade.

 

They should have changed their nickname to the "Fighting Messiahs..."

If you're going to change it, change it...

 

That's great, ha! God forbid if there were any religious families in the area who sent their children to that school during that period of time when their mascot was the Satans.

 

drought city in pretty much all of ND except around Fargo. I'm taking the grand tour of the state along I-94. when I move my family to my current gig in the Midwest.

 

Sooner than you think.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7843589/

For those who don't know North Dakota, Devils Lake is kind of out there. It's been awhile, but I remember it being about two and a half three hours from Fargo, and an hour, hour and a half from Grand Forks. Absolutely nothing up that way.

Weather is beyond brutal and you will not get used to it, no matter what anyone tells you. 50 below in the winter and 105 in the summer. No spring. No fall.

I don't know anything about the paper but I'm guessing pay is lousy/entry-level, which is a shame, cause this is not the kind of place anyone young is gonna want to be. Wouldn't be a bad place to raise a family though. I would apply myself but I can't imagine they pay enough and God forbid you got laid off. ... You couldn't be further away from it all if you were on the moon. North Dakota is definitely an acquired taste but it has a certain charm.

 

OK, this is a bit of an exaggeration.

It rarely gets over 100 in North Dakota. The summer is pretty much the same as other Midwestern cities. And there is such thing as fall and spring. It doesn't go from snow to 80s and 90s in one day. It's 70 today. There are long streaks of below-zero weather in the winter.

There's not a ton to do in the area, but if you like outdoors, you will love it. Very doubtful they will be laying anyone off, but the pay probably does suck.

It's definitely a foot-in-the-door job -- not a place to stay for too long.

 

You do get used to the cold. Really. Once you move, 20-degree weather feels like a heat wave.

 

I will concede that it's a "bit of an exaggeration," but not much of one.

Maybe global warming has changed things since I lived in ND in the mid 90s but I remember getting several inches of snow in Fargo in May and the year before I started college they had a blizzard before Halloween that people were talking about 10 years later. North and South Dakota and western Minnesota are the only places I've ever been where the hair in your nose freezes the second you step outside.

Summers were really bad too. Last year they were up around 100 for at least a week in July out by Valley. And it's not a dry heat.

I loved it there though and I'm not even big on outdoors stuff. If I didn't think I was already making twice as much as the highest paid person at the paper I would apply in a heartbeat. Nice place to raise a family, almost everyone is obnoxiously friendly and a very laidback way of life. It's pretty up by Devil's Lake too.

 

Things to see: The giant buffalo in Jamestown. The giant cow in New Salem. The Prairie Penis (ND state capital building, 18 stories tall or something). The Badlands (north unit of TR national park is better, I think, but south unit/Medora very convenient to I-94). Fort Abraham Lincoln south of Mandan, GA Custer's last command.

Lots of awesome sunflower fields east of Jamestown, lots of neat geography in the ranching country west of Bismarck.

And yes, it does get above 100 fairly often in the summer, it does get very cold in the winter, and in either climate Devils Lake is in the middle of BFE. (and since it's not that far from Rugby, the geographical center of North America, it really is smack in the middle of BFE).

 

Don't forget the world's largest turtle made entirely from tire rims in Dunseith.