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Job Details
Chron is looking for a Sports Editor who’s focused on what Houston fans care about most—both on the field and off. The ideal candidate will create unique coverage that drives cultural conversations surrounding Houston’s and Texas’ teams, athletes, and events and speak with an authoritative Texas perspective about American sports culture. We count on our sports editor to know what fans want and understand what people will be talking about tomorrow. They’ll be expected to write or assign everything from quick articles about games, trades, or disputes taking place on social media to longer form, thoughtfully reported features to evergreen stories about the Texas sports landscape and its 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 in 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 daily 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:
- Find unique angles on sports coverage, craft features and franchises that draw national attention
- Quickly cover newsworthy moments as they happen to capitalize on social and search traffic
- Juggle responsibilities, including reporting, writing, editing topic pages and posting on social media
- Balance daily, weekly, and longer-lead deadlines, working off hours when necessary
Describe the most challenging aspect of this position:
- Redeveloping Chron’s daily coverage of sports, finding new stories and unique ideas
- Crafting features, franchises, and projects that are exciting to readers inside and outside of Texas
- Covering a variety of sports, from the Astros and Texans to high school football and World Cup 2026
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
- Strategically deploying writers and widening Chron’s sports audience and appetite
- Creating an editorial calendar, marking specific dates and events to strategize coverage
- Meeting deadlines and keeping pace with publishing schedule while improving work quality
- 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 and loyal in-DMA visitors
Experience, qualifications, technical requirements, education:
- Bachelor’s degree in journalism, communications or English
- At least eight years of experience in reporting and editing, including five years in sports
- Preferred knowledge of Houston’s teams and players, personalities, and popular culture
- Preferred experience using Chartbeat, Google Analytics, Looker, or other analytics tools
- Experience working in a CMS and publishing to digital platforms preferred
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