With a new football season upon us, and having undergone two major transitions in the athletic program (Whit & Buzz) since we assumed the Gobbler Country masthead this past January, we are very excited here at GC for what Virginia Tech athletics hold for 2014-2015.
In April, I touched on expanding the site to allow for more voices, different styles, and cutting edge content. Sadly that has not happened in a somewhat slow recruiting summer, which has also involved some personal constraints. Further, with less to write about on summer break, it's difficult to keep interested writers engaged, and it was because of this we didn't bring anyone else onto the staff.
Now that FOOTBAWWWW is here we have 12 scheduled static pieces a week from about half a dozen writers! This makes up a nice content base, but it doesn't allow for enough flexibility right now. This needs to change. We need to be able to get content up faster, expand social media, and optimize any access (up to and including press credentials) that we have at our disposal.
We also need to be able to cover major news in the other sports as it occurs while not taking away from our football coverage. We also want to continue our (to date) excellent recruiting coverage as news drops. At our present capacity, and with all of us managing day jobs and families it'd be nice to add 3-4 more people as we embark on the upcoming athletic year.
I would love to have students, alumni, male, female, black, white, purple, green, college football die-hards who have been VT fans forever (AND ESPECIALLY RABBITS), come write for us!
I value all of the different perspectives, and my short track-record at the helm supports this. If you can write, if you have HoTTT takes, if you are shouting about red zone futility and nobody's listening anymore, we probably have a home for you here.
We have a fantastic new AD in Whit Babcock, who is making the programs more accessible to the secondary media, which means more and better coverage for readers here. Many thanks are also in order to the VT SID support staff for helping to foster in the new day. He is now making media credentials available to secondary media where there were strict restrictions in the past. Ours are pending, but I'm reasonably confident that we fit the new parameters.
We also have various media partnerships that SBNation has carefully nurtured into some excellent resources that can be used to support your writing. It really is an internship in itself in terms of the things that are self-taught and that we learn together. This is definitely a resume builder. Certainly a portfolio builder at it's very least.
So if you find yourself underemployed, looking to do something constructive, we have seen people come write for us in their downtime and use the site as a reference and get hired. Employers respect the passion and motivation!
Like Country Frank, we've managed to keep most of our staff intact since January, losing only two to attrition. And one of these guys may even be healthy enough to return. I am proud of this, and coupled with the numbers, the first eight months have been an unmitigated success here at GC. And now we get to see what we can do with football season!
I welcome you to contact me at gobblercountrymasthead@gmail.com and pitch me ideas, columns. You can get in where you fit in. There are no assignments, just gentlemens' agreements to to live up to our word. Life happens, and sometimes deadlines/goals cannot be met. We are trying to allow for succession, and build up a bullpen. If you want to write twice a month, that's fine. If you want to write three times a week, we can probably build you up to that also.We just ask that you don't be a no call/no show.
And while Cates and I generally have no problem getting to the articles to edit them in short order, we are always looking for people who can take on the added responsibility. A strong mastery of the English language is a MUST for this position ;) (actually, we could probably even make it work with Google Translator, strike that!)
So those are really the only hard and fast rules that we have here as we build this into a behemoth that will challenge ESPN.com for Interweb supremacy (all in 18 months, or so I've promised SBNation brass). SBNation could not be a better platform to cut your teeth on; it's very easy to post, and not a daunting system to learn at all for article submission.
Hopefully you choose to dip your toe in to test the water. For me and a couple others, this experience has been a game-changer. Maybe it could be for you as well. Either way folks, thanks for reading this welcome back from the summer column, and we look forward to hearing from you in the coming period! #Let'sGo # Hokieeeeess
And of course, it almost goes without saying: Mi Cassell es Su Cassell