The Spokesman-Review is hiring a sports reporter to cover Washington State University athletics. Our coverage focuses mostly on football and basketball, but also requires maintenance of all other sports at WSU. We travel to all road football games, as well as some basketball.
With this position, we’re seeking an enterprising writer, fearless reporter and experienced journalist who is organized and able to work independently. Creativity and the ability to juggle multiple assignments on tight deadlines are musts, as well as being savvy with technology. The successful candidate should expect to live in Pullman, Washington, about 75 miles south of our main office in Spokane.
What you’ll do:
- Prepare accurate, fair, balanced, and carefully researched stories and multimedia posts to meet assigned deadlines.
- Build strong sources within the identified ‘beat’, extending beyond just official sources
- Ability to keep the beat fresh with new ideas. Stay ahead of stories, anticipate changes, and write/publish those stories ahead of competitors. Clearly understand the beat to write with authority
- Demonstrate an appropriate focus on stories that matter to our audience and to the public record, using identified Key Performance Indicators made available to help you to improve audience relevance
- Able to stay ahead and out front of the competition, local or national competitors, specifically on the primary ‘beat’ with regards to key daily and enterprise stories
- Be willing and able to localize a national story when appropriate and do it quickly when needed
- Able to take photos, shoot simple videos, or record audio – or anything that can easily be done with a mobile phone – that will help tell the story or serve our readers; not relying solely on staff photographers for mug shots, especially those that will only run once
- Able to grow the total size of your journalism’s audience; ensuring stories have appropriate headlines, especially for the website, adapting to the changes in print circulation and growth opportunities with our digital audience. (Key indicators are the amount of times readers continue to turn to your stories and the amount of time your audience spends with your stories)
- Utilize art possibilities for every story, both in print and online, to increase and improve audience engagement; pull in graphics, design, photo, and online team members so they can gain a better understanding of the story, when appropriate
- Demonstrate ability to seek out and act quickly on story opportunities on all platforms used by our news organization
- Aggressively follow through on stories, including interacting in a professional capacity with readers after publication through comments or other engaging tools. This means using those avenues to find follow-up information and expand on stories
- Pitch stories for newspaper’s front page and homepage when appropriate
- Promote and assist in the development and facilitation of events designed to promote public awareness and readership of The Spokesman-Review
- Participate and provide positive experiences at company events as a liaison with key audiences/stakeholders such as community members, readers, service providers, donors, etc.
- Other duties as assigned
What you’ll contribute to our team:
- Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism.
- Two – three years of experience in reporting – sports reporting required.
- Valid driver’s license.
- Proficient in use of a computer and smartphone, including use of Newsgate and Django content management systems.
- Ability to use a smartphone to files stories and multimedia from the field and to stay current with news events.
- Demonstrate social media skills on Twitter, Facebook, and any emerging social media networks to both promote and enhance your journalism.
- Ability to work in adverse conditions and unusual schedules when news breaks. Must understand and uphold the standards, ethics, and mission of journalism at The Spokesman-Review on all platforms.
- Premium on organizational skills, able to meet changing deadlines, deal with multiple stories at once, keep supervisors abreast of developments, and work with other staff members on stories.
- Read The Spokesman-Review, both in print and online, and stay current with all relative news sources.
- Maintain a high degree of professionalism in representing The Spokesman-Review, always striving for fairness and accuracy.
Salary: $42-47K/yr.
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