The creators of ESPN SportsZone have been painted as ice-hockey-playing, long-distance-running technojocks. "Jeez, it sounds like we go to work and play all day," says news editor Mike Grady, in reference to a recent magazine article about the most popular sports page on the Web. But hard work and long hours are closer to the truth at the SportsZone offices in Seattle.
The editorial staff of 12 (including 3 women) produce the site as a joint venture between Starwave Corporation and ESPN. Editors get most of their news from sportswriters at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. But that's just the beginning. They have to edit, rewrite, and package newsfeeds and wires about dozens of sports, from basketball to rugby. And like their broadcast counterparts, these online editors are constantly adding to each story. In fact, I'm told that a story that goes up in the morning might change 17 times over the course of the day.
A passion for athletics is essential for the job. Mike compares the site's editors to anchors on ESPN's SportsCenter. "I've gone back to Bristol and seen how good those guys are on camera," he says with admiration. "They have to know what they're talking about, because they're ad-libbing so much. They make it sound like they've just watched the game."
Although SportsZone editors might love sports, their hectic editorial schedule doesn't allow for extravagant use of the free health-club membership (one corporate perk) or league soccer. Since most sporting events happen at night, the majority of the editorial crew works between four in the afternoon and one in the morning. At those hours, a lunch break means venturing out for fast food at a nearby suburban mall, and a social schedule means catching a movie with co-workers. "Friday and Saturday night life around Seattle is pretty foreign to me," admits assistant editor Greg Collins, who works evenings and weekends and takes Monday and Tuesday as his days off.
In spite of the hours, Greg says this job was the best thing he could do for his career. He came to the site as a fresh college grad: a communications major and sportswriter for the Stanford newspaper. At SportsZone, he still covers his alma mater. Last winter, for example, he ran the women's college-basketball desk. "It's pretty much the only place you're going to get day-to-day national coverage of women's basketball," he says of the site.
Now, supervisor Mike is looking for another assistant editor like Greg to edit copy from the wire, choose top stories, think up clever headlines, and write 50-word top-story blurbs. For the job, Mike, who covered the Sonics for five years at the Journal-American, says he's looking for someone with a broad sports knowledge and editing experience, especially at a daily newspaper. Pay ranges from the low 20s if you're right out of college to significantly more for someone with three or four years at a medium-sized newspaper.
Of his current position, Greg has one caveat: "If you're looking to become the next beat writer for a major team and use this as a stepping stone, you're not going to get a lot of experience here." In other words, the job isn't right for reporters, but for budding editors - a setup that's perfect as far as Greg is concerned. "When I found there was a sports service with millions of users in my own backyard, it was too hard to pass up."
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