Do news jobs get as many applicants as sports jobs?

[WaylonJennings]

I'm curious about the dynamics of this. Every time there's a job like the Virginia Pilot, we talk about how they can expect 300 resumes, and that's a conservative estimate. Does a paper get the same number if they post an education beat or health beat or cops beat or GA news position?

Some of you have been hiring editors in both sports and news. What's your experience?

 

[forever_town]

Perhaps because of the nature of the job we've advertised (when our publisher and CEO will LET me hire someone damnit!), I get a LOT of applications. Then again, my paper is usually the first journalism job for people right out of college. They're people who are looking to get in the door in journalism so they'll take whatever stories I can assign them, sports or otherwise.

I don't know, so I'd appreciate more experienced people correcting me on this notion, but I would think the majority of beat writer applications would be people who have entry level experience or have been either freelancers or GA reporters who are looking for a beat. However, I don't know if they would be as numerous as sports applications.

 

[Rickys The Best]

I highly doubt it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure landing a news job is competitive. But there are more jobs to be had. When I've applied for jobs, I've often sent out resumes for both since I have experience on both sides. I seem to get more interviews for news jobs, even though I have more experience in sports.

 

[FileNotFound]

Wrong, Rick. I hired in both news and sports. The adage of "10 people lined up behind you to take your job" was just as true in news. More so for reporting and design jobs, perhaps a bit less so for copy editing gigs.

 

[OnTheRiver]

I'm a features editor. Last open job I had garnered about 110 applications. That's for a sub-100K daily.

 

[Cansportschick]

The market I live in is very small. I know that one daily newspaper in the capital city gets three times the applicants for their sports department than their news department.

They whittle down the applicants by the samples that are submitted with the application.

It is very hard to get into sports rooms here.

 

[Flash]

The trouble with sports positions is that every looser fanboy thinks he can do the job. A former boss once confided in me the resumes he had received for the job with which I was rewarded. The cover letters, with their misspellings and sentence structures, would curl your hair. But the applicants knew sports so they were the best ones for the job!

 

[Cansportschick]

The trouble with sports positions is that every looser fanboy thinks he can do the job. A former boss once confided in me the resumes he had received for the job with which I was rewarded. The cover letters, with their misspellings and sentence structures, would curl your hair. But the applicants knew sports so they were the best ones for the job!

Yeah, misspellings and improper grammar on a cover letter is a bad first impression when applying for a journalism job.

 

[henryhenry]

The trouble with sports positions is that every looser fanboy thinks he can do the job. A former boss once confided in me the resumes he had received for the job with which I was rewarded. The cover letters, with their misspellings and sentence structures, would curl your hair. But the applicants knew sports so they were the best ones for the job!

define fanboy....

 

[The Last Boy Scout]

I must work at a ****ty paper. When I left my cops job, I was asked to meet and greet the candidates, take them to lunch, blah blah. I only did it twice because that was all the qualified applicants from a stack of seven resumes. We had trouble filling the other sports position, and of the 20 to apply for desk chief, none are qualified enough for an interview, so it's gone unfilled for months. Journalistic poison, I guess.

 

[Flash]

The trouble with sports positions is that every looser fanboy thinks he can do the job. A former boss once confided in me the resumes he had received for the job with which I was rewarded. The cover letters, with their misspellings and sentence structures, would curl your hair. But the applicants knew sports so they were the best ones for the job!

define fanboy....

Admitted to being a big fan of the local junior hockey club ... was a dishwasher at one of the local restaurants ...

 

[RossLT]

I live in a ****ty town and work for a decent paper, 18K. We had a news job opening and the ed-in-chief told me we got like 8 apps for it. When the sports gig that I got opened about 18 months ago they got like 40.

 

[friend of a friend]

That's like crazy.

 

[Spartakate]

I live in a ****ty town and work for a decent paper, 18K. We had a news job opening and the ed-in-chief told me we got like 8 apps for it. When the sports gig that I got opened about 18 months ago they got like 40.

****ty town meaning nobody in their right mind would live in that area of the country?

 

[outofplace]

I have been in a position to make this comparison at six newspapers. In ever single case, the demand for the sports jobs was much higher. Maybe that's just the small sample size.

Last job interview I had was for a sports writing position. They got over 120 resumes for the opening. I was among the six that got interviews in person, but didn't get it (supposedly I was the 2nd choice, if the SE was to be believed). The SE suggested if I still wanted a job in that area, I should apply in news. They had three positions open at the time and were desperate to find anybody with any real qualifications to take one of them.

 

[txsportsscribe]

depends on where you post the job opening. i got lousy response for a couple of gen assignments positions posting on the state press association web site. later job postings on jjobs.com brought 40-50 resumes each time and we're a very small community daily. and they weren't all fresh grads.