Cleveland.com's award-winning sports team has an opening for an ambitious, social media-savvy reporter to cover high school sports.
Cleveland.com is the leading source of high school sports coverage in Ohio. This reporter will have the opportunity to break news, tell impactful stories and help shape the future of our high school sports coverage across multiple platforms.
We are seeking someone who can be not only a reporter, but also a digital storyteller and a community builder. The candidate should have experience delivering engaging and informative content from in front of a camera as well as in written form. Applicants should have proven experience of building, maintaining and engaging a community.
The job will include game coverage and feature coverage of important people and trends in high school sports. However, special emphasis will be placed on providing context and presenting content across platforms to reach audiences wherever they are.
The successful candidate will use reporting and AI-assisted tools to produce exclusive content, and will build meaningful relationships with coaches, athletes, administrators and fans. Content examples could include breaking news, recruiting news, investigations, trend stories, video explainers and social-first reporting.
This reporter will join a three-person high school sports team covering one of the most passionate high school sports markets in the nation.
The base salary range is $55,000 - $63,000 per year.
EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
- A degree in journalism, communications or a related field, or equivalent education and experience.
- At least three years of professional journalism experience with a demonstrated ability to produce clear, compelling and accurate reporting.
- Ability to work under deadline pressure and prioritize tasks appropriately
- Solid understanding of news writing, journalistic ethics and story structure
- Experience with search engine optimization practices
- Experience capturing and editing photos, audio and video content
- Experience using social media to source, distribute and promote content
- Basic HTML or equivalent web language
- Demonstrated ability to reach audiences on multiple platforms
- Skills in social media and digital interaction
- Proven ability to utilize a broad set of tools to tell stories and engage audiences
- Reliable transportation to meet with sources and cover events.
DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES
- Gather information and produce journalistically sound news elements for use in all media platforms, existing and future, that are:
- Balanced and factual
- Timely and topical
- Well-sourced and contextually correct
- Coverage also will include:
- Special emphasis on interacting on social media platforms, with story shares, objective commentary, and promoting the news organization's content initiatives.
- Using social listening, analytics and audience-monitoring tools to identify trends, conversations and story opportunities.
- Taking photographs and short video, and posting it to the web as well as uploading to any internal production systems
- Using laptops and smartphones for remote web reporting
- Using the Arc content management systems, and any future CMS
- Frequent, incremental posting throughout the day
- Curating and contextualizing relevant news and developments within the high school sports landscape.
- Monitoring and engaging in reader comments on stories
- Elevating comments into new posts when appropriate
- Other duties as assigned.
Skills Required
- Degree in journalism, communications or related field, or equivalent education and experience.
- At least three years of professional journalism experience.
- Experience delivering engaging content on-camera and in written form.
- Proven experience building, maintaining and engaging a community.
- Solid understanding of news writing, journalistic ethics and story structure.
- Ability to work under deadline pressure and prioritize tasks.
- Experience with search engine optimization (SEO) practices.
- Experience capturing and editing photos, audio and video content.
- Experience using social media to source, distribute and promote content.
- Basic HTML or equivalent web language.
- Demonstrated ability to reach audiences on multiple platforms and use analytics/audience-monitoring tools.
- Experience or ability to use Arc content management system (CMS).
- Proven ability to utilize a broad set of tools (including AI-assisted tools) to tell stories and engage audiences.
- Reliable transportation to meet with sources and cover events.
What We Do
Advance Local, one of the largest media groups in the United States, operates the leading news and information companies in more than 20 cities, reaching more than 50 million people monthly with its quality journalism and community engagement.
