Sports Reporter

The Bay Area News Group (Mercury News/East Bay Times) is seeking an ambitious and versatile sports reporter who will join our talented high school sports reporting team, help back-up professional beats during peak seasons as well as keep an eye on the new professional women’s sports teams coming to the Bay Area.

We are looking for a sports reporter that can provide quick game analysis in an hour or less as well as deep-dive enterprise suitable for our digital and print platforms. Our reporters work in real time, publishing words, sounds and images around the clock for millions of online readers and hundreds of thousands of people who read our daily newspapers.

A large part of this job will be familiarizing yourself with the top prep teams and coaches in our coverage area and providing regularly-scheduled content such as rankings, athlete of the week candidates, roundups, and previews – proven winners for us on the metrics scale. Football is our primary focus from late summer through the early winter. It drives pageviews and subscriptions like nothing else on the high school beat. During football season, we give our readers something new every day in time for our 8 a.m. newsletter. In the winter, we mostly cover basketball. In the spring, we cover sports such as baseball, softball and track and field. This beat also provides opportunities for enterprise stories and in-depth features that reach broad audiences. We are not looking for run-of-the-mill profiles.

What You Will Do

Provide concise, accurate game coverage
Write analysis that tell readers more than who scored and won
Produce compelling enterprise stories
Generate regular weekly content that readers will come to rely on like weekly rankings, roundups, athlete-of-the-week, etc.
Regularly work nights and weekends
Build relationships with the schools to bring in exclusive content and/or breaking news
Meet deadlines
Communicate with your supervisor and colleagues regularly
Monitor your metrics and adjust your audience engagement strategy as needed

What You Will Bring

Knowledge of a variety of sports - football, soccer, basketball, baseball, softball, track and field, etc.
Previous experience as a working journalist (college media experience is okay)
Strong writing skills under deadline pressure
Ability to juggle multiple stories of varying complexity
Strong grammatical skills and a working knowledge of the Associated Press stylebook
Proficiency at using social media to report stories and to share them
Ability to find and develop sources within the organizations
Solid sports news judgment
Excellent communication skills regardless of the platform (i.e. in-person, Slack, Zoom, email, texts, etc.)
Attention to detail and organization
Ability to work harmoniously with other departments (i.e. audience, photo and print production teams)
4-year college degree (journalism or related fields)
Experience with Slack, Zoom, Google suite, Word Press

Travel

Approximately 5%, travel with teams

The hourly wage is $28.00 - $32.00. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, time in role, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, MediaNews Group offers a comprehensive benefits package, and 401K plan (all benefits are based on eligibility).