By Gavin Kentch
The headline here should be pretty self-explanatory: I am looking to hire several more reporters to help bolster the site’s World Cup coverage for the upcoming season.
My goals here are two-fold. I want both to reduce my workload on winter weekends, and to bring additional voices to the site. If you’re reading this now, you’ve likely read a lot of my rambling prose over the past few years. Other people have different perspectives and different writing styles; it’s time to give them a platform as well.
This is a paid position: $50 per race article, with the expectation that the article contains quotes and analysis and some real reporting and stuff. Each World Cup race article takes me two to three hours to write, so while this is not worldly riches it is hopefully not an insulting hourly rate, either.
Applications are open now. Deadline to submit your materials is October 21, but earlier is better. Feel very free to contact me with questions or for more clarification: gavin (at) nordicinsights.news.
My sincere thanks to Runners’ Edge Alaska for not only putting me back together once again this morning, but also for their financial support of this site that is allowing me to hire and pay other reporters.
Here are some specifics:
Job description
World Cup race reporter for one of the internet’s top two English-language cross-country skiing news websites. No travel is required or expected (though I do have the budget to send a single person to world champs in Trondheim in February and March 2025, and I would love to pay for a plane ticket for someone leaving from, say, New York City or Minneapolis rather than Anchorage, not saying just saying).
Requirements
- Must love nordic skiing
- Must be a good writer
- Must be someone who is good to work with. You don’t have to be my best friend, and you don’t have to share my politics, but you should answer emails or texts on race weekends, file stories when you say you will, and in general be responsive and responsible.
Some logistics
- As noted above, this is purely a remote job. If you’re going to be traveling in Europe I will very gladly get you credentialed for in-person reporting, but that is not my expectation here.
- You do *not* have to watch the races live before writing about them. I haven’t watched a European World Cup race live in years (they typically occur between 1 and 5 a.m. Alaska time and I need my sleep), and I seem to be able to fake it okay. Don’t get me wrong, you will have more and better questions for the athletes if you know something about the race you are asking them about, but, also, see my last point about faking it.
- You should know how to write, and how to write well, and how to write well with relative efficiency, and how to do so in Google Docs. Past experience with WordPress wouldn’t hurt, but I would take a skilled writer with few technical skills over the world’s greatest WordPress whiz with poor prose.
- You can find the 2024/2025 World Cup schedule here, and the 2025 world champs schedule here. Most races occur on weekends, but there are also seven Fridays in there as well. A three-day race weekend yields six distinct articles, one each for the men’s and women’s race each day.
- My aim here is to hire up to four reporters for World Cup coverage, so that no one has to write too many articles in a single weekend and the potential for burnout is mitigated.
- You should love skiing, but you should be able to be relatively chill about it when you put on a reporter hat. I’m looking for someone who will ask professional questions, not just completely fangirl out. Yes, you will get to ask Gus Schumacher questions. No, you should probably not plan on posing for a selfie with Gus if you cover a race in person.
Who should apply
- You, if you love cross-country skiing and want to write about it!
- People in the East Coast or Central time zones are particularly encouraged to apply. The 10- to 11-hour time change from Anchorage to Europe can be pretty brutal, and a lot of parts of this job would work better if you were a mere six hours behind the action.
- I am a 43-year-old straight white man. An awful lot of people in journalism look like me. People who have differing perspectives or experience, however you may interpret this, are particularly encouraged to apply.
- If you are a current NCAA athlete you should definitely apply if you are interested, but you should also assume that this job is not readily compatible with weekend race travel. I’ve done both at one time, or tried to, and it’s pretty rough on both racing and writing. If you’re a strong writer I’d love to hear from you, but we might need to work out something else for the heart of the NCAA season.
- If you’re at a school with an NCAA or USCSA team but are not on the travel squad, or have collegiate race experience but are not racing this season, this job could be a great match for you.
- Current high school students with strong writing skills who are interested in the position and have time available on weekends are encouraged to apply (but please see below about the need to cc someone else on emails if you are under 18). I would assume that you are not available for Friday race coverage.
How to apply
- Please email basic contact info, some information about yourself and why you’re interested in this job, and up to three examples of your written work to gavin (at) nordicinsights.news. Either links or attachments are fine for writing samples. PDF is preferred over Word for attachments.
- If you have a formal résumé prepared feel free to attach that, but if you don’t have this currently you don’t have to make one just for this job, honest. I want to know if you can write, and a little bit about you, but you really can just write a single paragraph about your background and interest and that will be enough.
- If you are interested in this job, please apply even if you do not have a journalism degree or facially relevant coursework to your name. I have, uh, a B.A. in Classics on my CV, and then a law degree, and, awkwardly, I have never taken a single journalism class in my life (though I did teach one in high school…?). I clearly believe that good writing is good writing, regardless of what your transcript says.
- If you are under 18 years old, please copy an adult on all email communication. This is non-negotiable if you have a current USSS license, either comp or general; I have an active comp license and am therefore bound by the Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policy, as adopted by USSS, which proscribes one-on-one electronic communication between an adult participant and a minor athlete. Even if you do not have current status with USSS this is simply good policy, so please copy an adult regardless.
(If you respond to this posting on Instagram with questions about the job via DM, note that the Nordic Insights web guru, Morgan Hartley, a USSS coach, also accesses the NI Instagram account, such that another adult participant is included in chats there and this is not one-to-one communication in violation of MAAPP. But, really, just send me an email and cc your parent or coach.)
Managerial style and goals
I think about this recent post (and other, similar content) from Steve Magness a lot:
My goal here is to hire smart people who are good at writing and love nordic skiing, give them the tools to succeed and the platform to publish on, and then largely stay out of their way. You want to namecheck Thoreau, Faulkner, Joyce, and Baudrillard in a single article about someone’s Strava? I mean, that specific example has already been done, but if you have a comparable angle and it works, go for it. Want to discuss letty checks, haruspicy, or skiers’ cats? If it works within the article, Nordic Insights will probably provide a home for it.
Bottom line, I am a very good editor; I will carefully read your work and can pretty much promise that I will improve it, since everyone benefits from having an editor. Other than that, though, I intend to largely stay out of your way. My goal in bringing new people on board is to get new and additional voices on the site, not four more people who all think and write like me.
Again, applications are now open. Please share this posting with anyone you can think of who might be interested, and contact me with any questions. Many thanks.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
