About the job

Ready to help level the playing field? The GIST is looking for a knowledgable, passionate and witty college sports fan to join our content team. If you’re interested in joining a collaborative team environment and flexing your sports writing muscles, we want to hear from you.

In this role you’ll have a significant impact on The GIST’s soon-to-be-launched college sports vertical, ideating, pitching and writing national and conference-specific sports news content for our newsletter. You’ll also assist our social media team in college sports content, and contribute to the growth and expansion strategy of the vertical.

The GIST is a women-founded startup that creates sports content, experiences and community that are by women and for all sports fans through our free, localized 4x-weekly newsletter, 3x-weekly sports biz newsletter, daily social media and twice-weekly podcast. The GIST will be expanding into college sports news this summer.

Our vision is to become the go-to source for sports for underserved fans.

Since launching across North America in September 2019, our community has grown to over 700,000 GISTers, we have worked with brands like the NBA, FanDuel and Under Armour, and our co-founding team was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 2020.

Want to join our team? We hope so. Here’s more on the role:

Role: Full-time, three-month contract, with intention to extend.

Hours are mostly after 12 p.m. ET, with evening work on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursdays, because, sports
Reports into: Head of content (HOC)

Location: Remote, U.S.-based

Start date: ASAP

Key objectives

Consistently stay informed on the latest in college sports news and pop culture at large to create top-notch content that readers love
Continually listen to community feedback to improve content and pitch new ideas of how we can surprise and delight our audience, retain our audience and grow our community

What you’ll be doing

Newsletter

• Writing national as well as Power Five conference-specific sections for the Monday, Wednesday & Friday edition of The GIST’s 3x-weekly newsletter in accordance with The GIST’s editorial standards and brand voice
• Selecting which stories will be featured in the newsletter, how and where
• Helping to refine The GIST’s voice for the college vertical
• Further into launch, writing and/or co-writing The GIST’s Special Editions as well as an additional weekend read
• Assisting with newsletter operations when assigned
• Working closely with The GIST’s HOC, developmental editor and fellow writers

• Collaborate with sports biz and sports news writers as well
• Assisting in writing/creating branded content when assigned
• Contribute to the evolution of The GIST’s voice, constantly updating The GIST’s style guide

Other

• Contributing creative ideas to continually improving The GIST
• Contribute ideas and feedback to The GIST’s branded content and social media teams
• Opportunity to write longer-form articles, guides, deep dives and interviews

What you’ll need

• Writing/communications experience of at least two years is preferred
• Experience writing newsletters/short form content is an asset
• Experience in producing podcasts is an asset
• Experience writing in a brand voice is an asset
• Undergraduate degree
• Degree in Journalism, Editing, English, Sports Media or a similar field is considered an asset
• Ability to work Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday night (in ET) schedule
• Proficiency in writing with the American Style Guide
• Exceptional writing, spelling and grammar skills
• A strong understanding of and passion/intuition for sports
• You must be able to contextualize, distill and curate sports content

We’re looking for someone who…:

• Is calm as a cucumber under pressure and is able to react quickly to breaking news
• Is an avid college sports fan who’s able to sift through the news and pick and provide context on the most important stories
• Is witty, with a great sense of humor
• Has strong journalistic integrity including fact-checking
• Has experience working toward a deadline, and can work quickly and efficiently
• Has a collaborative and sports-loving spirit
• Must value hard-work and teamwork
• Passionate about leveling the playing field in the sports industry
• A quick and resourceful learner who can thrive in a fast-paced, evolving startup setting and is able to grow with the company

What we offer

• The opportunity to be part of a women-founded and operated, hard-working, growing and fun team that is leveling the playing field in the sports industry
• An opportunity to write about and cover a broad spectrum of sports and cities
• Competitive compensation and benefits package
• Flexible location

Are you picking up what we’re putting down? We hope so. So, what’s next?

Write us a newsletter. You read that right, you’ll be writing a newsletter to simulate what it would be like if you were our college sports writer.

Your newsletter must include:

Intro
3 sections: 2 national, 1 conference-specific (city of your choice)
Each section should be no more than 300 words (the shorter the better)

The GIST Pick’s

Choose the day you send us a newsletter. Please send to us anytime between 6-10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, June 21st Wednesday, June 22nd, Thursday, June 23rd, Friday June 24th or Monday, June 27th.

Your newsletter should cover the recent events in college sports, as well as preview what’s to come. It’s highly suggested you write the newsletter the night before, and schedule your email for the next morning.

Send the newsletter to [email protected] with the subject line of: The GIST – College Sports Newsletter Producer 2022 – Your Name.

After that, we’ll be requesting resumes from candidates who wrote our fave newsletters. Candidates with the best newsletters and most applicable resumes based on the qualifications above will be asked to do a remote interview. Start date is the beginning-middle of August.

Here are some newsletter-writing tips:

• Subscribe to The GIST (and select a city!) to see what our newsletter is like.
• Use a recent newsletter as a guideline for you. We want to see if you can write in The GIST’s brand voice.
• We know we don’t often write about college sports, but use our newsletter framework, voice and vibe as inspiration for this college newsletter.
• Choose the Power Five you want to write for, but remember the city news should only be one section. The rest of the newsletter should be U.S.-based college news that everyone in the country would care about.
• The newsletter should not be longer than 1,200 words total.

The GIST is strongly committed to diversity and especially welcomes applications from racialized persons/persons of colour, women, Indigenous/Aboriginal People of North America, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2S+ persons, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.

The GIST strives to make our entire hiring process as accessible as possible and provide accommodations as required for applicants with disabilities. For any recruitment related accommodation needs and/or requests please contact us via e-mail.