Editor jobs as well as editorial jobs in the sports journalism world are given to those who've already held sports writing jobs such as field journalists and have consistently proven themselves in all three of the aforementioned areas.
It's important to note that if you want to be a sports journalism writer or editor, you are entering a field where serious research, style, and commentary are often under-appreciated. Many sports enthusiasts are, unfortunately, not the most literate type and have the ''dumb jock'' mentality even though they are not professional athletes. However this is difficult to determine, since there are also plenty of intelligent, literate sports fans and some quite intellectually learned athletes as well. It probably has to do with emotion-driven stereotyping walls erected between ''men of action'' contrasted with ''men of thought'', as if the two somehow are ''not supposed'' to go to together. Whatever the correct answer, this situation leads to a couple of issues that burgeoning sports journalists need to be prepared for. One such issue is a constant stream of fans having over-emotional, superficial reactions to a lot of what the sports journalists write — especially if they have to say that the local professional sports team is not very good. The other issue is that other fields of journalism and writing often look down sports journalism upon.
Sports writing jobs should, therefore, be taken with a grain of salt. Someone who is very serious about both writing and sports should only pursue them. It's probably not a good idea, if you are just generally seeking writing jobs or editor jobs in journalism, to try to break in through sports journalism. You could become frustrated and also discouraged very quickly. Likewise, if you are seeking more ''serious'' journalism as your true niche and lasting career, you might find it very difficult to get your foot in the door with higher positions and advance into them after a few years' hard work because your credentials won't be seen as being all that much.
So if you want to get involved with sports writing, you should passionately love sports and/or be an athlete yourself. Indeed, it's probably best if you're an athlete. It will be very helpful to your writing career to have the experience of an athlete. You can then have a far better insight into the minds and feelings of athletes, coaches, trainers, and fans, and it will help you with intuitively finding good stories and then being able to verify the research leads you uncover.
And that's one very important ability and responsibility of the sports writer: to verify information as being factual or at least accurate. It shows poor writing or editorial skills to simply believe whatever the PR or marketing department, or the (understandably) biased coaches or athletes, say about any matter related to an athlete or a sports team. Knowing how to verify sources, finding corroboration among different takes, and telling stories independently are paramount in this business. Yes, it's true that there are often ''juicy'' stories in the sports world about bad-boy athletes and their less-than-heroic private lives, or the rising power of the team owners and the incredible amount of money spent by them, or the huge pay of star athletes, but the facts behind these stories need to be verified. False speculation in the sports world soon gets found out, and those who find it out tear apart those who fell into the trap of false speculation.
In this field you can either opt to work with sports journalism magazines, or with newspapers, or maybe with TV/Internet. Some of the top names in this field are: “Sports Illustrated” and “The Sporting News” (sports journalism magazines), and ESPN (TV). However, to get a writing job with these major places, and then to progress into a sports editor job or editorial job, you need to start somewhere. And remember these are highly competitive jobs.
It's more important to have experience and prove yourself in this field than it is to have a big university degree. If you have a BA in Journalism and some athletic experience, you have all the education you need. The best way for most aspirants to start today is with the Internet. You can start a sports writing blog about current events in sports. You can also prove yourself as a superior sports writer by submitting freelance sports stories and opinions to citizen journalism websites like Ground Report, Associated Content, Triond, and Digital Journal.
You can have a fulfilling career with writing jobs or editor jobs in sports journalism. The average annual salary in the United States for those in these positions is $52,000.
