These are remote positions to be based in Austin or Houston, and surrounding areas.
Advance Local has exciting opportunities for College Sports Reporters in Texas for our brand-new website launching this summer.
We have multiple college sports positions open in our digitally focused, multimedia newsroom, specifically for a beat writer for the University of Texas and a second college-focused position that will cover trending topics around major Texas-based programs, such as Texas A&M, TCU and Baylor, to name a few.
We are looking for reporters who want to cover college sports with a unique voice that doesn’t replicate what traditional news and sports site deliver. Our coverage will provide smart commentary, unique perspectives and entertain and inform our readers. On any given day you may find yourself writing a long-form narrative or a series of incremental updates to a breaking sports report, recording podcasts, and optimizing your post for a social or search-driven audience.
What you’ll be doing:
- Provide reporting and analysis of college sports
- Capturing video and audio of news moments
- Breaking news and feature reporting, as well as monitoring coverage and analysis on other sports news outlets and aggregating relevant reporting onto our site
- Contribute to the department’s traffic and enterprise goals
- Report and create journalistically sound digital posts that are balanced and factual, timely and topical, and well-sourced
- Use effective techniques of digital journalism: frequent posting, appropriate aggregation, engaging readers on social media, and monitoring traffic to better understand what is connecting with readers
- Work as a teammate while also having the ability to work independently and remotely
- Self-publish articles, photos and videos, and be able to learn the Arc publishing system or any future CMS
For this position, we are looking for candidates:
- Who are versatile and write authoritatively, providing a strong editorial voice and perspective on college football in Texas
- Driven, dynamic reporters and writers with the ability to deliver a high volume of content every day
- Able to proactively identify stories that are trending and respond quickly, keeping the quality of content consistent and engaging
- With flexibility to cover what is needed, which may be during early shifts, nights or weekends
- Who can succeed in a collaborative environment while also possessing the ability to work independently
Our ideal candidates will have the following:
- Bachelor’s degree in journalism or communications or equivalent education and related work experience with a proven ability in journalism reporting and writing
- Minimum five years’ experience with a proven ability in reporting and writing, including minimum 2 years of sports beat experience
- Proven experience building, maintaining and engaging an active audience for college sports teams
- Ability to work independently under deadline pressure and prioritize tasks appropriately
- Experience with search engine optimization practices
- Experience using social media to source and promote content
- Demonstrated capability to react quickly and deliver audience as news breaks on the beat
- Understanding of the methods and tools used to deliver content across a variety of platforms
- Ability to leverage relationships with sources to deliver content that differentiates the organization from competitors
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