Are you passionate about pickleball and journalism? If the answer is yes, you might be a great fit to join our team at Pickleball.com as a sports journalist.
Job Description
In this role, the candidate will be responsible for staying up-to-date on the latest pickleball news, including tournaments, pros, action, drama, rule changes, technology, personalities, lifestyle, health, celebs, general how-to information, and much more. This data will be used to research and write stories, conduct interviews, and report on news events promptly and accurately, in order to inform and educate our audience.
Our organization values integrity, accuracy, and ethical reporting practices. The ideal candidate is a skilled writer and pickleball nerd with a passion for storytelling. The candidate will work closely with our editorial team to develop story ideas, pitch articles, and collaborate on projects with senior management.
If this description fits, we encourage you to apply. We offer competitive compensation, a benefits packages, and opportunities for growth and advancement within the company. We prefer candidates who can work out of our Dallas office, but this is negotiable. Some travel to tournaments may be required.
Responsibilities:
- Interview sources, watch pickleball broadcasts, and research current events, tournaments, informational pieces, and external news stories in pickleball to gather details for your articles.
- Write clear and concise articles and reports for publication on the company website.
- Create multimedia content, like photos, videos, podcasts, and social content to support your stories.
- Collaborate with editors, photographers, videographers, and our other journalists to develop story ideas and produce high-quality content.
- Writing quick-turnaround pickleball news items for the web and print while ensuring the pieces are precise, grammatically correct, and deliver accurate information to our readers.
- Tracking and investigating major pickleball news and developments to create various news reports or video material.
- Handling of some front-end website curation, including manual posting of your articles, building of homepage news blocks, testing of web features, reporting of bugs, and consistent updating.
- Working with the social media team to ensure your stories are promoted on our platforms effectively.
- Conducting keyword research and using SEO best practices to increase traffic to the company website.
- If desired, there may be opportunities to act as a commentator at professional events and film in-studio on-camera productions for PickleballTV and other platforms.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in journalism, communications, writing, broadcast, English, or a related field.
- Experience with journalism and writing within the sport of pickleball.
- Experience with multimedia reporting, including photography and video.
- Strong communication skills with excellent writing and editing abilities.
- Hands-on experience with Google products, particularly Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail.
- Excellent interviewing and fact-checking skills with attention to detail.
- Working knowledge of social media platforms and current trends
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines.
- Knowledge of media ethics and legal standards for journalism.
Bonus skills and qualifications:
- Mid- or high-level pickleball player
- Knowledge of SEO principles and digital analytics tools.
- Familiarity with task management platforms including Slack and Asana
- Experience with designing and updating a website’s front-end
- Willingness to travel to tournaments and events to write news stories.
