Sports Editor

Title: Sports Editor
Organization: Ventura County Star
Sitting on the edge of the great Los Angeles sports market, Ventura County Star has carved out its niche in sports with extraordinary coverage of prep and community college athletics. The Star covers the games our readers want, provides the numbers that sports fans crave and then goes beyond to tell the stories of the people who are involved. The Star sports department has a tradition of digging into stories of importance that can and do play on the front page.

The Sports Editor will lead a staff of six veteran and talented writers. We are looking for a strong and experienced editor who will work with this staff to help them improve their writing and reporting, and to deepen the connection between our coverage and our readers. A healthy freelance budget complements that staff coverage and supports daily local prep roundups.

The Sports Editor is responsible for daily coordination with the Scripps West Central Desk, which handles page production and wire editing. The Star sports pages must reflect the interests of our readers, ranging from recreational sports to the all the professional leagues. The Sports Editor directly handles editing of all local content, determines story placement throughout the section and approves all sports pages nightly.

The Star is continually enhancing its online sports presence and the Sports Editor must be a leader in helping us better connect with the online sports community.

Key Activities

Job-specific responsibilities include:
Ensuring the news organization is the dominant local source for sports news via all digital means, leading with a focus on immediacy and impact.
Coordinating text and visual content from a variety of sources, including staff members, correspondents, wire services and user-generated reports.
Directing multimedia journalists to cover day-to-day sporting events and develop feature and enterprise reports with text, video and still photography.
Coordinating with the Director of Digital Media on sports agate, schedules and related resources.

The Four Pillars:
In addition to supporting the deadline pillar, the Sports Editor is expected to work collaboratively with colleagues focused on watchdog, grassroots and data-driven journalism to provide audiences with a complete and comprehensive local news report.

Social Media/Inclusion
Facilitating inclusive reporting and recognizing the role that user generated content can and should play in the development of the news organizations sports coverage.
Engaging readers through social media, directing staff to respond to reader comments and pursue other avenues for interacting with audiences.
Monitoring competitors' Web sites and TV/radio broadcasts as well as phones, e-mail and social networking accounts (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) to ensure the most comprehensive, competitive coverage.

Quality Control and Curation
Assuring quality by closely editing content as it is published across a variety of platforms.
Editing content and interacting with print edition editors to carry out daily plan for the printed edition.
Establishing and facilitating coordination with the central desk to assure effective, high-impact presentation and efficient, on-time flow of content.
Overseeing the curation of staff- and user-generated content online and through the editorial front-end archiving systems with an emphasis on audience access and utility. Curation is defined as the gathering, discernment, distribution and continual fostering of content that is relevant to our audiences.

General
Meeting performance measurements and metrics as specified by the Editor.
Reflecting diverse communities in all content.
Actively participating with the editor and other newsroom leadership to align work and organizational resources with strategic goals.
Involvement in short and long-term content planning, including developing advance coverage plans for anticipated events.
Managing newsroom resources and direct-report activity against annual budget and plan.
Managing a staff of employees to include hiring, training, supervising, counseling, developing and evaluating employees; conducts and submits annual performance appraisals in accordance with company policies and federal/state regulations; in conjunction with HR resolves employee concerns
Conducting staff meetings and webinars to keep direct reports and field personnel up-to-date with metrics, progress and new initiatives.
Supervising direct-report job functions and providing guidance and training as necessary.
Evaluating direct reports and keeping them up-to-date with metrics, progress and new initiatives.
Working with other Scripps editors with similar job responsibilities/titles to share content, ideas, systems, work flows and best practices seamlessly. Recognizing all are part of a Scripps-wide team of newsroom leaders.
Maintaining positive working relationships with teams in all areas of the newsroom.
Helping establish guidelines and processes to support local initiatives.
Ensuring fairness in coverage, sensitivity to community expectations and balanced content.
Inspiring people and encouraging teamwork; being open-minded and flexible to new thinking.
Adhering to all E.W. Scripps and local company policies, procedures and Code of Ethics.
Posted: 07/21/2011 - 11:57 p.m.

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