Sports Writer, Starkville, MS

Description: Sports Reporter: The Starkville Daily News, a daily Horizon Publications newspaper, is seeking a sports reporter with the vision, skill, passion to help make our great sports coverage even better. The Starkville Daily circulates throughout Oktibbeha County, a place where college and high school football is practically a religion. That passion spills over into each community’s other prep sports, making for a primed readership that is always hungry for local sports coverage. In addition to prep sports, we cover Mississippi State University and other SEC schools. Working with the sports editor, the sports reporter reponsibilities include covering area sporting events, writing headlines and cutlines, compiling round-ups as well as covering area high school sporting events We are seeking someone with appropriate experience. Salary and benefits are competitive. Paid vacation, sick leave, mileage and 401K available. Please send a resume, clips and/or tearsheets to Don Norman, Publisher, Starkville Daily News. P.O. Box 1068, Starkville, Ms. 39760, or e- mail:sdnpub@bellsouth.com or fax (662)324-8092.

 

warm beer - run!

 

Actually, you can buy it cold now. Passed a law much to the chagrin of many a convenience store owner who had to install thousands of dollars of coolers for the birra.

 

Outside of the now cold beer update a couple of months ago (good news there by the way), I'm curious about this place since it has recently been brought back to my attention. Anybody have any information on the paper and life in general in Starkville? Talked to SE Brian Hawkins and he seemed like a good guy over the phone, and the chance to move from Chicagoland preps to SEC coverage is enticing. I'm an Illinois kid my whole life, so I'm wondering what the town of Starkville is like. Any info. on this would be much appreciated. Also, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to start, any reasons why there was little interest in the position on this thread a few months ago?

 

It's Starkville. To some, it's an outpost from Deliverance. To others, its a nice place. It's a judgment you will have to make if you live there.

 

I remember when this gig came open a few years ago and I went to their Web site to check out some of the stories. The fact that a column was written by the SE (not sure if it was Brian Hawkins or not) referring to Mississippi State as "we" was enough for me to look elsewhere for employment.

 

So you want to know about Starkville and The Daily News? I can tell you from my experience, it won't pay much. I interviewed there a few years ago (I grew up in the area) and they eventually got a news person to cover some sports stuff from the inside. Hawkins was the ME when I went there, if I remember right. The SE was like in his 60s or 70s; he may have retired. Hawkins is a good guy from what I know. It used to be, you could find plenty of errors on the pages in the sports section and the section didn't look good at all. but I haven't seen it lately since Brian took over. It has a small circulation, and I am sure someone with the good vision can help it compete with the newspaper in Jackson and Tupelo with the Mississippi State coverage. It has a 5A public and a 3A private school in the town, and the public school competes regularly in football and basketball. As far as what else it covers, I am not sure. The hot spot used to be called Rick's if you wanted to go to the bar. It has a good bowling alley, decent restaurants (Little Dooeys BBQ is the best-Lee Corso, Herbstreit and Fowler always go there when ESPN is in town) and a good movie theater. You won't find a lot of big stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City or some of the other place as you would in Jackson or Tupelo. People like to call Starkville a retirement town. I can try and answer more of your questions if you want to PM me.

 

Worst major college town in America...

 

What do they expect from a minority hire?

 

In Starkeville, they'd better have an "S" on their chest some would say.

 

That paper sucks. Absolutely, 100% sucks.