Come internet with us!
SB Nation's NBA team sites are always looking for additional talent to add to their tremendous staffs. We're looking for writers to help enrich discussion on our sites, promote our material on social media and cover everything entailed with basketball. Your chance for greatness is at hand.
The Skinny
SB Nation NBA has grown leaps and bounds over the past years and is now one of the largest online sports outlets in the world, reaching tens of millions of readers each month. We are still primed for huge growth and you can be part of that.
Joining the exclusive staff of one of our team sites gives you one of the more prominent voices in the basketball community. Team fan bases are always ravenously consuming our material, and you'll have a chance to speak to the masses through our wide-reaching SB Nation platform.
Some of our staff have used their time with us as a springboard into other professional writing gigs with us and other media companies. While that's definitely not the goal of everyone here, it's a beautiful and very real perk for your efforts on the site. Write. Read. Grow.
Minimum Qualifications
1. You are a huge fan of basketball and passionate follower of your team and have experience writing about these topics. If you don't yet have experience you can join your favorite team site and start writing FanPosts. It's how many of our writers got their start.
2. You can take the thoughts inside your head and transcribe them into competent arrangements of English words that effectively communicate your idea, i.e., you need to be able to write complete sentences. And more!
3. You have strong opinions on your team that have not been yet been brought to the foreground.
4. You have strong opinions on issues that have already been brought to the foreground but need some additional perspective.
5. You take genuine pride in your writing, your discussions and how you gather facts and data to back them up.
Preferred qualifications
1. You are an active member of one of our communities who submits FanPosts or FanShots or are very interested in figuring out how the site operates and communicates.
2. You are active on Twitter and/or Facebook, spending time looking for fresh news and analysis of your team.
3. You enjoy discussing your team on our website(s) and want to enrich the discussion in our comments.
-The Staff We Need-
News Reporting and Aggregation
This is a big part of what we do here. We are frequently one of the first sites to post reactions and news stories about the teams we cover. The idea is to provide a platform for breaking news or rumor discussions as they pop up throughout the day. A writer who takes control of this journalistic weapon will often be in charge of setting the tone for discussions on our site, a tone that often can permeate the broader media landscape.
A writer who wants to be involved with this aspect of the site will need a flexible schedule, particularly during the workday when news typically breaks. Our goal is to have a post ready to be published very soon after a story breaks. These types of posts aren't 2,500 word diatribes. Sometimes a couple hundred words (2-3 paragraphs) can be very effective in starting the discussion, with more detailed analysis coming later in the day or even the day after.
Key skills here are a nose for news and the ability to quickly put together a coherent first story.
Game Day Coverage
The staple of SB Nation -- one of the reasons people come to us and trust our coverage. There's, at minimum, 90 games to cover every season (don't forget those 8 preseason games!) and maybe even a postseason swath that's even more intensely covered. For every game we have a preview, a live GameThread and post-game coverage that includes a quick recap (posted within a half hour of game's end) and a full recap (in-depth analysis to be posted the next morning).
Someone interested in this type of writing could be involved in all of those aspects or be solely committed to helping with one of them.
The people we need helping with this endeavor should be able to write concisely and would operate effectively on a schedule. Much like the News Reporting, Game Day Coverage usually provides the jumpstart for conversations and sets the tone after a win or loss.
Game Day coverage is generally shared among the site staff but you should be able to cover at least one or two games per week. Live game coverage is something many of our sites do and is often an available option for our proven and trusted staff.
Social Media and Short Form
Some people are just programmed for social media, specifically, for us, that's Twitter and Facebook. We need people who can contribute to our social accounts and use them to effectively promote our material. This includes scheduling tweets/posts for ICYMI's with enticingly clever pitch lines that present the article content in an appealing light rather than just regurgitating the link (regurgitation is an easy way to get unfollowed.)
This role also engages followers in conversation to keep a lively personality flowing through the account in addition to occasionally live-tweeting/facebooking events.
This role is perfect for those who have a great sense of fun and sharable content and a passionate voice that comes across in quick bursts.
Features and Analysis
There's obviously a ton of material that can be self generated on each team and isn't reliant on news or game play for inspiration. We have all types of content flavors on our sites: film breakdowns, trade speculation, reaction to pop culture, silly lists, game diaries, and statistical analysis.
Perhaps your forte isn't NBA X's & O's, we still have a bevy of outlets into which you can pour your writer's soul. Or maybe you've got a brand new idea for the site that you want to develop -- we're always on the lookout for passion and opinions. Ideally, people who are interested in this role would have some prior writing/blogging experience and be able to write lengthier pieces. These types of articles aren't as time-sensitive as the news and game coverage.
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Are You Up For It?
SB Nation NBA gigs typically start unpaid with plenty of opportunity for advancement if the talent and desire are there.
Do You Feel The Itch?
If you're still reading then you have passed the first step: you're thinking about how you can contribute to one of our sites! Your next action should be to find the site that covers the team you are most passionate about and follow most closely. Join that community. Get to know the writers and regulars on the site. When you're ready, post some Fan Posts and see how the community reacts. You can then reach out to the site's manager or editors and express your interest and include links to your current works samples.
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