How To Become A Sports Editor: What It Is and Career Path

What is a sports editor and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Bradley Shreve

A Sports Editor is a journalism professional that works as a newspaper editor specializing in news about sports. He/she is generally in charge of assigning stories to reporters, editing sports stories, and ensuring the news is covered accurately. As a sports editor, you are expected to be up-to-date with the daily news to be in-touch with sporting events as they occur. A Sports Editor must possess essential skills, including writing and editing skills, strong journalistic reporting, and good grammar.

Sports Editors work closely with other executives in administration, marketing, and finance to ensure they execute their job well. They travel quite frequently since they may need to attend sporting events or to interview athletes. A sports editor may decide to specialize in stories about a particular sport or to cover different sports.

Sports editors travel a lot in their work and therefore do not have a regular work schedule.

What general advice would you give to a sports editor?

Bradley Shreve

Editor, Tribal College Journal

Be flexible. An undergraduate degree in history offers a solid liberal arts background, but not a skill set that is finely tuned for most jobs. Think outside the box, and understand that the job you land probably won't be in the history profession.

ScoreSports EditorUS Average

Salary

4.0

Avg. Salary $50,996

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.7

Growth rate -5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.8

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.27%

Asian 6.06%

Black or African American 3.80%

Hispanic or Latino 8.73%

Unknown 4.67%

White 76.48%

Gender

female 14.82%

male 85.18%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress level

6.7

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.3

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a sports editor

Explore sports editor education requirements

Most common sports editor degrees

Bachelor's

84.9 %

Associate

7.4 %

Master's

4.2 %

Start to develop specific sports editor skills

Skills	Percentages
Sports Coverage	10.86%
Adobe Indesign	7.76%
News Stories	4.95%
Feature Stories	4.85%
Editorial Content	4.83%

Complete relevant sports editor training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New sports editors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a sports editor based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real sports editor resumes.

Research sports editor duties and responsibilities

Achieve a strong visible social media presence to 9,000 plus followers on affiliate GameTimePA twitter.
Achieve worldwide coverage with one particular article criticizing racism in soccer.
Proofread and copy-edite all stories in sports section.
Use Facebook insights to measure audience engagement and health of posts.

Prepare your sports editor resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your sports editor resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a sports editor resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable sports editor resume templates

Build a professional sports editor resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your sports editor resume.