Sports Editor, Chron

Sports Editor, Chron

Chron is looking for a Sports Editor who's focused on what fans care about-both on the field and off. The ideal candidate can quickly write up daily game coverage, jump on breaking news, drive cultural conversations surrounding Texas and Houston's teams, athletes, and events, and speak with an authoritative Texas perspective about American sports. And maybe some F1, too. We count on our sports editor for everything from quick articles about the game or disputes taking place on social media to longer form, thoughtfully reported features to evergreen stories about Houston sports history. We're also looking for someone who can help Chron leadership strategize about the direction of sports coverage and the future of the site. Chron's Sports Editor should have a strong background writing and reporting features, but be able to type and publish stories quickly when the news calls for it, edit well, and ideally come with and continue to build a roster of freelancers who can fill out our coverage.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Excellent news judgement and feature writing skills
• Excellent reporting, researching, and interviewing skills
• Strong copy-editing skills and knowledge of AP Style
• Familiarity with the needs of the Houston and Texas audience
• Familiarity with national digital media landscape
• Familiarity with content management systems

Competencies/Critical Skills:

• Finding unique angles during games, creating original franchises that draw in new readers
• Quickly covering viral moments when they happen to capitalize on social and search traffic
• Juggling multiple responsibilities, including reporting, writing, editing the home page and posting on social media
• Working evenings and balancing daily, weekly, and longer-lead deadlines

Describe the most challenging aspect of this position:

• Reporting and writing news stories over the weekend
• Assigning stories to freelancers
• Posting on social media and curating the home page after late evening games and events

What type of decisions does this position refer to others for approval?

• Long-term editorial strategy and priorities
• Development of long form features, franchises, and projects

Measures of success for this position include:

• Overall traffic performance in aims of meeting daily and monthly goals
• Increasing daily, monthly, and yearly output of sports articles through writing and editing
• Creating editorial calendar, marking specific events to strategize coverage around
• Meeting deadlines and keeping pace with publishing schedule while improving quality of work over time
• Mentions, links, shares, and pickups of stories from prominent third-party publications
• Reader shares and other engagement with stories on social media platforms
• Overall increase of unique in-DMA visitors
• Overall increase of loyal in-DMA visitors

Experience, qualifications, technical requirements, education:

• Bachelor's degree in journalism, communications or English
• At least eight years' experience in reporting and editing, including five years in sports
• Knowledge of Houston's teams and players, personalities, and popular culture preferred
• Experience using Chartbeat, Google Analytics, Looker, or other analytics tools preferred
• Experience working in a CMS and publishing to digital platforms

As part of its continued efforts to maintain a safe workplace for employees, Hearst Newspapers requires that all employees be fully vaccinated (as defined by the CDC) against the coronavirus by the first day of employment as a condition of employment, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Hearst Newspapers will consider requests for reasonable accommodations due to medical, including pregnancy or a pregnancy-related condition, and/or religious reasons on an individual basis in accordance with applicable legal requirements.