Talkin' Times

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.82.30
Current Song - You Know What to Do (The Beatles)

As a free agent sportswriter, I like to keep up to date on job openings at newspapers. The openings are very hard to come by as of late. However, I found this one ...


Title: Preps Sports Reporter
Location: IA - Davenport
Job Type: News
Division: Quad-City Times
Status: Regular

Description: Quad-City Times Preps Sports Reporter

The Quad-City Times (51,000 daily, 68,000 Sunday), part of the Lee Enterprises chain, is seeking a multipurpose sports journalist who has solid reporting skills and can report for the print paper and the Web.

We are seeking a sports reporter who will devote most of his or her time to covering local high school sports. This is an area in which we place heavy emphasis and consider some of our most important beats. High school teams in the area routinely compete, and win, in state championships in Illinois and Iowa, so our readers expect superior coverage.

The ideal candidate for this job needs to be able to report for our print newspaper and our ever-growing qcvarsity.com site. Online and multimedia knowledge is required. This reporter also must have a hunger for enterprise journalism and exploring new ways of telling stories, whether it is online or in print.

We are in a diverse, two-state, sports-oriented metro area of about 400,000 people that is three hours from the nearest major league sports city but within five hours of six of them. We are just 50 miles from the University of Iowa, have minor-league franchises in several sports and are home to a PGA tournament and the largest non-marathon road race in the Midwest.

Qualified candidates should have a bachelor's degree and possibly some daily newspaper experience.

It's been a couple of years since they last had an opening for a writer.

This is a newspaper that is heavy on the new media. They do a lot of video (hey, I did that), photographs (hey, I did that), articles (hey, I do that), blogs (hey, I also do that), and some radio appearances (currently a one-hit wonder). The QC Times is one of those papers that I always expressed freelancing for if the opportunity came. But, folks, this isn't a freelance position.

This is full-time.

I would have to leave Shell. I'd also have to drive to and from Davenport on a daily basis. That is, unless I somehow, miracously, found a place to stay in the Quads. With the scant $400 I have saved up, dream on! Plus, this isn't like working for SVN. I hear the work hours are mostly during the day, with the usual gamer done quick.

Another source tells me they may be eying for nearby applicants.

Do I send in my resume yet?

To let you know how scarse prep reporting positions are, it's one of few in the nation. So many prep sportswriters are out of work, so they are probably swamped with applications. It would be interesting just to send one in, only to see how far up the ladder I would get. That is, before I would have to back down.

Yes, you're going to have to count me out for the QC Times gig.

Commuting to Davenport and back forces me to suspend my college studies. I'm 16 hours away from getting my Associate's. Plus, the job suggests a bachelor's. I'm already long-delayed. I can't even transfer to another institution because of residency requirements for the A.A. That's the biggest factor. So it seems I'm real stuck until I get out of Sauk. The only gig I'll consider at this moment is one from SVN - but they haven't offered one in five years.

It's too bad, I think I would have liked it there. Hopefully they'll call back in 2010.