Idaho Statesman seeks Boise State basketball/football reporter

[mprater]

IDAHO STATESMAN SEEKS BOISE STATE BASKETBALL/FOOTBALL REPORTER

JOB SUMMARY:

The Idaho Statesman in beautiful Boise is searching for a reporter to cover Boise State basketball (No. 1 beat reporter), Boise State football (No. 2) and general college enterprise. This individual must be highly motivated, relentless in the pursuit of news and become a local, regional and national expert in Division I college basketball. The reporter must have strong reporting skills, be a compelling and alternative story-teller and have a sense of urgency in this 24-hour news world. Reporter must own his or her brand, using blogs and social media in sophisticated ways that build audience and relationships. This position must contribute to our digital presence with video, live chats and multi-media projects that are critical to 21st Century journalism, as well as back up other sports staffers as needed.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

§ Strong knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) principles a must.

§ Proven research and creative writing skills.

§ Keen grammar, spelling and punctuation as well as other journalistic skills.

§ Solid written and verbal communications skills with the ability to edit stories.

§ Highly ethical in story-telling.

§ Strong ability to understand digital analytics.


Qualifications:

§ Four-year college degree, preferably in journalism or equivalent experience and training.

§ Knowledge of current events locally, nationally and internationally.


If interested, send a short cover letter, resume and samples of your work to Idaho Statesman Sports Editor Mike Prater ([email protected]) and [email protected].


All offers of employment from the Idaho Statesman require successfully passing a
pre-employment background check and a drug test. The Idaho Statesman is an equal
opportunity employer that values diversity in the workplace.

 

[I Should Coco]

A top-notch job at the state of Idaho's best newspaper. Release the hounds.

 

[Gator]

Perhaps someone else much smarter about such things can explain this to me. Why would a beat writer be required to know about search engine optimization principles, and why would it be so high up in the advertisement for the position? Shouldn't the beat writer be far more concerned about doing his job, and doing it the way he would do it for the print publication? Yeah, I realize the industry is changing, and I guess I'm a bit jaded about what is required from a journalist these days.

 

[dm19]

Perhaps they mean that they want someone who knows how to use keywords in their stories that are highly searchable, thereby making it easier to draw readers to the website. Who knows?

 

[TGO157]

Perhaps someone else much smarter about such things can explain this to me. Why would a beat writer be required to know about search engine optimization principles, and why would it be so high up in the advertisement for the position? Shouldn't the beat writer be far more concerned about doing his job, and doing it the way he would do it for the print publication? Yeah, I realize the industry is changing, and I guess I'm a bit jaded about what is required from a journalist these days.

If the beat writer is posting blogs and whatnot to the web CMS, they should probably know meta titles and descriptions.

 

[HackyMcHack]

Perhaps they mean that they want someone who knows how to use keywords in their stories that are highly searchable, thereby making it easier to draw readers to the website. Who knows?

Bingo.

 

[dirtybird]

Perhaps someone else much smarter about such things can explain this to me. Why would a beat writer be required to know about search engine optimization principles, and why would it be so high up in the advertisement for the position? Shouldn't the beat writer be far more concerned about doing his job, and doing it the way he would do it for the print publication? Yeah, I realize the industry is changing, and I guess I'm a bit jaded about what is required from a journalist these days.

Well McClatchy is in the midst of a big SEO push and their back end is rather intensive in terms what you have to fill out to be ready to go online. If you don't know how, you're putting in a bit of a barrier to breaking news. It also happens that these things aren't terribly tough to do. You write an extra headline that's bare bones and searchable and a set of search terms. As others said, it's part of the job to write things people want to read, and now this is part of it.

I also think it's in no small part because if someone isn't going to learn and do something relatively mundane, you might just be broadcasting you're a squeaky wheel. If you're doing "video, live chats and multi-media projects" and not completely reliant on someone else to do most of the work, the SEO stuff will be easy.

 

[Zachary Holden]

Any update on this one?