Sports Writer [Conyers, GA]

[KevinmH9]

Company: Rockdale Citizen
Position:
Seeking eager sports writer
Location:
Conyers, Georgia
Job Status: Full-time
Salary: Not Specified
Ad Expires:
September 2, 2008
Job ID: 957331

Description:
The Rockdale Citizen in Conyers, Ga., is looking for a sports writer for its two-person staff in Rockdale County located in the Atlanta metro area. Good writing, editing and organizational skills are a must for this position. Extra consideration will be given to applicants who have experience with photography. The Rockdale Citizen is a daily newspaper that publishes six days a week and covers a wide range of sports, including three local high schools. The Citizen is an equal opportunity employer and a drug-free workplace. If interested, please send resume and clips to Jeff Gillespie, Rockdale Citizen, 969 South Main St., Conyers, GA 30012.

 

[deskslave]

A paper that once published the third-quarter running gamer from the Super Bowl.

None of the three high schools is particularly good at anything, though they are in a region with the Athens schools. If the paper sent you to cover them on the road, which it likely won't, at least you could hang out in Athens for the night. I'm pretty sure I remember hearing their deadline was something like 10 p.m. though. Could have changed, for all I know.

 

[Shifty Squid]

This wouldn't be all <i>that</i> bad, if you either live in Atlanta or want to and are interested in covering preps. Don't know much about the paper, but deskslave is pretty much right when he says none of the schools are particularly good at anything. Salem has been pretty good at football lately, but nothing great. They also had a girl on the basketball team recently who was really good. Rockdale High had a football player die from heat stroke on the practice field a couple of years ago, so that cloud is still hanging over there to a certain extent.

Downtown Conyers is about 20 minutes east of Atlanta via I-20, an interstate that will also get you to Augusta in a couple of hours. Do they really cover Athens teams? I wasn't aware of that. It must be peripheral coverage, at best. It's more than an hour from there to Athens, and it's not a fun drive. You'll probably focus on the Rockdale and Newton County teams. There are worse places to be.

 

[Brookerton]

Oh geez, where do I begin? If you graduated middle school you would be over qualified for this job.
The high schools in Conyers are not very good. Salem is probably the best, especially in football. You'll mostly be covering games, they never write features. They will quote a kid maybe once every 1,000 stories, seriously. Don't be surprised if you cover a game on Friday and gets in the paper on Sunday. Seriously, two days later. That's how they roll.
They usually run the all county teams for fall sports in March, the winter all county teams in May and the spring all county teams in July.
In the summertime you'll cover American Legion baseball games and the paper will be mostly AP stuff.
If you have one drop of talent you will be the best thing to ever hit this paper.
And yes, deadline is at 10 p.m. because the paper is paginated and printed off site. I think during football season it's 11 p.m. or 11:30 p.m.
The only good thing is you don't have to worry about any desk work.

 

[deskslave]

No, no. They don't cover the Athens teams. I meant that the Rockdale schools are in a region with the Athens teams, and so they'll play up there. You might get to cover those games; you might not.

You're never going to be 20 minutes from Atlanta. Maybe 30. And that's when traffic's good. And it never is.

 

[Shifty Squid]

Gotcha, deskslave. Misunderstood your earlier post. Mea culpa.

I-20 West really isn't all <i>that</i> terrible if you're heading into Atlanta, unless you're trying to go during morning rush hour. Rockdale County is certainly growing, but it's not doing so anywhere near as fast as the northern 'burbs (Gwinnett, Cobb and north Fulton counties). So, depending upon where you lived in the county (near downtown Conyers where their office is would be a decent place to look), I'd say 20 minutes from certain parts of south Atlanta isn't out of the question. 20 West also takes you right to Turner Field, which is both a good and bad thing, depending upon who you are.

Of course, Brookerton sounds like he has a better handle than any of us on what this paper is about, so I'd defer to him on this one. I can tell you some things about the area, but he sounds like the expert of sorts.

 

[JohnKeene]

Any idea on salary for position? Or cost-of-living?

 

[bydesign77]

John,

Cost of Living isn't all too bad in that area. My buddy just moved there after returning from Iraq and is renting a house in Covington (about 10-15 miles away from Conyers) for less than 700 a month.

Conyers is 25 miles from the perimeter, so you're outside of Atlanta and it isn't north of the city, so it won't be too bad.

I briefly was the SE at the Covington paper and I know Conyers tried to poach a little into Newton County, but I don't know if they were successful. But they certainly had a better product than us. Which wasn't hard to do.

 

[Georgiaguy]

I used to lay this secion out at the Gwinnett Daily Post. That is where the Rockdale and one of the Newton Co. (Covington) papers are printed. Jeff (the sports ed) is a good guy I always really liked him, but the deadlines are 10 pm, but really that means 9 pm or 9:30 so that the layout people have time to slap something together. Friday nights that deadline moves to 11, or it did, and it is a total cluster, but most Friday nights in newspapers in the fall are that way.
None of the schools are all that good in anything. You will cover lots of preps and that is really about it. They travel with football and basketball and baseball sometimes, but that is a lot of HWY. 138 to Athens.
You will not have to do any layout, and that will be a relief, but you also will get no say in how your section looks either. Also unless something has changed the photogs at that paper are very poor and very artsy, so you never know what your lead art might be, or what your cutlines might have to say.
Pm me if you want to ask anything else.

 

[Pencil Dick]

"Don't go back to Rockdale,
and waste another year."

[REM]

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

lol

 

[Drip]

lol

This is a joke. How can an editor, any editor, justify running a story about the presidential election BELOW the fold?

 

[slappy4428]

A dog attacked kids at school... there are priorities...

 

[SouthernStyle]

What's with the pick problems? Did the dog get the pickers, too?

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

C'mon, they got the black guy above the fold. It might not be Obama, but he's THEIR black Democrat. Local, local, local, *******.

 

[Drip]

C'mon, they got the black guy above the fold. It might not be Obama, but he's THEIR black Democrat. Local, local, local, *******.

LOL but that just may be their logic.

 

[Brookerton]

Thier logic was that everyone would know who won the election before they went to bed, so why make it a big deal. I guess they didn't see the historic part to it.

 

[Drip]

Thier logic was that everyone would know who won the election before they went to bed, so why make it a big deal. I guess they didn't see the historic part to it.

No they saw it. They just don't have the sharpest minds making key decisions.

 

[Brookerton]

Here's the editor's response to the whole thing.

http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/main.asp?SectionID=8&SubSectionID=8&ArticleID=4991&TM=32289.2

From the letter ...
"When our readers went to bed Tuesday night, they knew that Obama had been elected their next president. What they did not know was who had been elected commission chairman, who had been elected sheriff, who had been elected to the board of education, who had been elected clerk of courts and who had been elected to the board of commissioners. Our responsibility is to serve our readers, and those stories comprised the news package that led our front page."

 

[Drip]

Here's the editor's response to the whole thing.

http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/main.asp?SectionID=8&SubSectionID=8&ArticleID=4991&TM=32289.2

From the letter ...
"When our readers went to bed Tuesday night, they knew that Obama had been elected their next president. What they did not know was who had been elected commission chairman, who had been elected sheriff, who had been elected to the board of education, who had been elected clerk of courts and who had been elected to the board of commissioners. Our responsibility is to serve our readers, and those stories comprised the news package that led our front page."

Translation: We are local. You want national and world news, read it in another newspaper.