The Bay Area News Group, the newsroom that publishes The Mercury News and East Bay Times, is seeking an experienced investigative and enterprise sports reporter with strong digital acumen. We want someone who can investigate and report a sexual abuse scandal at a high-profile sports organization as deftly as s/he could write a revealing profile on a major player on the Bay Area sporting scene (Steph Curry, Jimmy Garoppolo, Buster Posey.) This person will be a motivated, productive journalist with a natural curiosity about our Bay Area sports community and an ability to share the discoveries in a compelling, engaging and quick fashion to an insatiable online audience. We would look to this person to play a number two position on our most popular sporting teams and/or events to our audience at any given moment, from the Giants to the 49ers to the Warriors, as this has proven to be an effective strategy to build our digital audience.
Essential Functions
- Write hard-hitting analysis
- Produce compelling feature stories on and off the court
- Cover, photograph, live tweet, and get video at a variety of live sporting events.
- Be comfortable Interviewing coaches, athletes, families, organization officials and sources outside the sports arena to enrich content.
- Build relationships with the team to bring in exclusive content and/or breaking news
- Use social media to engage the audience.
- Must be able to research and develop stories to the utmost accuracy.
- Meet deadlines
- Communicate with your supervisor and colleagues regularly
- Monitor your metrics and adjust your audience engagement strategy as needed
Competencies & Skills
- Degree in journalism, communication or equivalent experience.
- Prior sports knowledge is required
- Experience at a daily newspaper or online news outlet.
- Experience with news reporting and writing, using social media, creating enterprising content.
- Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Strong reporting, writing, organizational and story structure skills.
- Understands imperatives of emerging and existing platforms, including web, mobile and print.
- Must be flexible to work evenings, weekends and/or holiday’s as well as odd hours if necessary/news requires.
- Must live in the Bay Area or be willing to relocate (no relocation assistance offered).
- Must submit 2-3 writing samples with resume and application.
Please send your resume and clips to sportsgigs@bayareanewsgroup.com
