Justin Jarrett

Profile

Sports Information Director and Director of Athletics Marketing at University of South Carolina Beaufort
Newspapers | Savannah, Georgia Area, US

Summary

Throughout my career at daily newspapers, I have proven my ability to juggle multiple assignments and handle deadline pressure by generating award-winning breaking news stories, features, enterprise projects, columns and game stories. I have covered NCAA Division I football and men's basketball beats, PGA Tour and Champions Tour golf events, professional football and baseball games, and high school and recreational sports. I also have experience as a copy editor, designer, agate clerk and do-it-all sports editor at a small daily, so I understand all aspects of putting out a high-quality sports section every day.

For the past six years, I have worked in the sports department at The Island Packet newspaper in the Hilton Head Island, S.C., area. When the Packet's sports section merged with The Beaufort Gazette's sports section in July 2008, I became the USC Beaufort beat writer for both papers. Soon after, I was promoted to assistant sports editor/online for the Packet and Gazette, and in January 2011 I became the papers' sports editor.

If you want to find out more about me or read some of my work, please feel free to visit my website -- www.justin-jarrett.com.
Specialties: Column writing, feature writing, deadline writing, social media.

Experience

  • Nov 2011 - Present
    Sports Information Director/Director of Athletics Marketing / University of South Carolina Beaufort
  • Apr 2010 - Present
    Freelance writer / Sports Direct Inc.
  • Jan 2011 - Nov 2011
    Sports editor / The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette
  • Sept 2008 - Jan 2011
    Assistant sports editor/online / The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette
    • Oversee and maintain the sports sections of both papers’ Web sites

    • Beat writer for USC Beaufort: Write features, enterprise and breaking news in addition to event coverage; write weekly notes package and administer live blogs during home baseball games

    • Write a weekly column, as well as feature and enterprise stories, and provide general sports coverage

    • Produce online-exclusive features such as audio and video clips gathered during event coverage, blog posts, live chats and podcasts

    • Update Web site throughout the day with breaking news, promos to new blog posts, etc.

    • Created and continue to maintain multiple sports-related Twitter accounts to drive traffic to stories and blog posts on our Web site, send out live score updates during high school football games and interact with readers

    • Worked with Web editor to create team pages for all area high school football and basketball teams

    • Maintain team pages, including updating HTML modules with schedules and results and maintaining statistics databases for high school football and basketball

    • Help coordinate planning and production of material for weekly “Preps Plus” page

    • Help produce annual special sections previewing the Verizon Heritage PGA Tour event and the high school football season
  • Jul 2005 - Sept 2008
    Sports reporter / The Island Packet
    • Primary beat writer for two high schools: Wrote features, enterprise and breaking news, in addition to game coverage

    • Posted to a high school sports blog, participated in a weekly sports podcast for the paper’s Web site and produced “Web extras,” such as audio and video clips gathered during event coverage

    • Helped coordinate planning and production of material for weekly “Preps Plus” page

    • Helped produce annual special sections previewing the Verizon Heritage PGA Tour event and the high school football season

    • Wrote a biweekly tennis column for recreation page and occasional high school sports column for Bluffton Packet supplement
  • May 2004 - Jul 2005
    Sports editor / Parsons Sun
    • Oversaw all aspects of planning and production for daily sports pages

    • Expanded coverage of eight area high schools, especially coverage of non-revenue sports and coverage of outlying schools

    • Expanded coverage to include a nearby NCAA Division II football program

    • Expanded coverage of American Legion baseball

    • Wrote regular features, issue stories and in-depth profiles

    • Produced annual special sections previewing the high school football and basketball seasons

    • Coordinated with advertising department to create a weekly “NASCAR News” supplement

    • Supervised a summer intern for production of weekly youth baseball and softball supplement
  • Jun 2002 - May 2004
    Sports journalist / Columbia Missourian
    • Sports columnist, January 2004-May 2004

    • University of Missouri football beat writer, August 2003-January 2004

    • Designer/agate clerk, Summer 2003

    • University of Missouri men’s basketball beat writer, October 2002-April 2003

    • Copy editor, August 2002-December 2002

    • General sports reporter, Summer 2002

Education

  • 2000 - 2004
    University of Missouri-Columbia
    Bachelor in Journalism

Additional Information

Honors:
INDIVIDUAL Association Press Sports Editors Under 40,000 circ. 2010 • Honorable mention, Explanatory • Honorable mention, Game story • Honorable mention, Breaking news 2009 • Honorable mention, Explanatory 2008 • First place, Project reporting • Third place, Features • Honorable mention, Explanatory 2006 • Honorable mention, Breaking news S.C. Press Association Under 26,000 circ. 2010 • First place, Sports enterprise • First place, Spot sports news • Second place, Sports columns 2009 • Second place, Sports columns 2008 • First place, Sports features • Second place, Sports features • Second place, Sports columns 2007 • Third place, Spot sports story 2006 • First place, Sports features • Second place, Sports enterprise • Third place, Sports columns 2005 • Third place, Sports enterprise

Posts

January 02, 12:35 PM

  Hey y’all, it’s Truman. I had the day off from school Thursday, so I was going through my Dad’s bookmarks and stumbled onto this blog. I can’t believe Dad is exploiting me for a few cheap laughs. Actually, yeah, I can totally believe that. Never mind. Anyway, I thought this would be the best [...]

December 12, 12:14 PM

Cleaning out the ol’ inbox this morning and ran across a BabyCenter newsletter about the things that change when you have a baby. Pretty good list, but it’s sort of the Disney version, if you will, so I decided to add some levity — and a dose of reality. Enjoy. Or recoil in horror. Whatevs. [...]

December 06, 02:37 PM

So…long time, no blog. As you might imagine, I’ve been kind of busy for the past four months or so with this whole being a parent thing. And that’s exactly what brought me back to this little corner of the interwebs. I wanted to tell y’all that we’re actually doing it — we’re parents. I [...]

September 03, 11:51 AM

I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought about sitting down to write this post, only to be pulled away by one thing or another, usually the persistent call of diaper duty. I’m not gonna lie, I had some major anxiety about the whole diaper thing, never having changed one, unless you count the [...]

August 22, 10:51 AM

Ever since Truman arrived a little more than two weeks ago, I’ve been contemplating my next blog post, but it has been extremely difficult to find the time to write it and even more challenging to find the words to do it justice. A friend once told me the greatest writer in the world could [...]

July 30, 11:58 AM

For the first time since the make-sure-he-is-still-there ultrasound in what seems like a previous lifetime, my stomach was churning on the drive to the doctor’s office this morning. Even though our last visit just nine days ago yielded little or no progress toward Baby O’Clock, there was this strange feeling in my gut as it [...]

July 23, 09:48 AM

A non-update update from the 38-week doctor’s appointment Wednesday: Effacement? Nope. Dilation? Nada. Numbers that don’t really mean anything to me? He’s minus-2, which I excitedly assumed to mean he’s going to be a very good golfer, but it apparently has something to do with how far his head has dropped in the pelvis, or [...]

July 19, 03:24 PM

The nursery is complete. No, seriously, we have photo evidence. The hospital bags are mostly packed. All the essential items, as far as we know, have been purchased, with the notable exception that we still don’t have one of these, greatly reducing the odds he will grow up to be a cage fighter. We are, [...]

July 06, 01:03 PM

Among the many warnings I have received from other parents about what to expect when the baby arrives, one is really starting to hit home. You cannot believe how much “stuff” a baby requires, they told me. No kidding. He isn’t even here yet — though he should be within the next four weeks — [...]

June 28, 09:47 AM

Well, thanks to the warnings of our friend Allison, I was denied the awkwardness of attending breastfeeding class — and subsequently felt like a jerk when only one other husband was absent, and he’s deployed by the military, but I digress — so the What I Learned At Baby School series has been reduced by [...]

In my day job, I'm an award-winning sports writer doing my best to adjust to the changing media landscape and embrace our new internet overlords. I believe in the power of the written word, no matter the medium, but I also recognize the importance and almost limitless potential of the Web in today's media climate.

In my spare time, I'm a husband, a music lover, a prolific television viewer, a sports fan, and an aspiring novelist/humorist with a social media addiction. You can find out more about me and read my work at justin-jarrett.com.

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