MLB Sports Journalist Intern (unpaid)

Sport Relay is a small sports journalism website that is looking to grow. Currently, we only cover Major League Baseball. In a few years, we plan to move into other sports as well. But it's baseball all day every day at Sport Relay at the moment.

Would you like to get your foot in the door as a sports journalist, but have no idea where to start? Want to improve your article writing skills or begin to make waves in the industry?

Sport Relay is offering an unpaid internship as an MLB Sports Journalist Intern. This internship has no set length. As long as you're writing and writing well, you can generally stay aboard and continue writing indefinitely. You may earn a press credential with Sport Relay as well, though if you are a college or high school student, many teams will not approve your press credential until you are out of school.

How to Be a Successful Sports Journalist

So what does it take to make it in the industry and to earn a press credential with Sport Relay? What you need to make it in the industry is not only writing skills, but self-promotion. You need to gain a specific kind of reader: one that will follow you and your career wherever you go. In order to gain those followers, you will need to bust your butt. If you're young, a lot of what you need to do may come easier because you may already be doing a lot of what you need to do for self-promotion. You need to start promoting yourself on social media. Each time an article written by you is published, you need to advertise that you've had an article published on your social media accounts. You make a post on your social media to inform your readers that there's something new to read.

It takes a long time to make it in this industry. It is extremely rare to hear about young, up-and-coming sports journalists. When you first hear about a sports journalist, often times they have been already around for years without you ever knowing of them. Journalism is not an easy industry to use to get famous quickly.

What Sport Relay Offers

You need a medium on which to have your articles published. You need to learn how to conduct yourself in press boxes and clubhouses. You need to learn how to act around professional athletes. They've spent years training themselves on how to conduct themselves around journalists. The least you can do as a new sports journalist is spend some time learning etiquette from a professional already in the field.

Sport Relay will help you improve your articles. We'll have you shadow someone with experience prior to heading to press boxes or clubhouses on your own. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions and learn from someone who has been going to ballparks as a journalist for years. You won't be alone the first time-- and it'll be with someone you've grown to know.

You can work at home or from the ballpark. Sport Relay is online only.

What Sport Relay Requires for Press Credentialing

You can be the best writer on the team, but that won't necessarily get you a press credential. It would definitely help, however. We need our credentialed sports journalists to write 2-3 articles per week. That may seem like nothing and for many sports journalists, it is a small amount. But it can seem like a lot of articles if you cannot think of something to write. You can always ask the editors or other writers for ideas. We're a team at Sport Relay and we all help one another.

You'll be required to post links on your social media to your newly published articles on Sport Relay. This is how you'll get many of the views on your articles at first. You'll also get help from Google search.

You will be required to write for search engine optimization (SEO), which basically means that we expect you to follow certain rules in your articles and titles within those articles that will make it easier for people to find your articles on search engines like Google. We have a step-by-step guide that will make it easy for you.

We require you to support your fellow writers and post links to other Sport Relay writers' articles. This helps everyone out, including you when other writers link to your articles.

How to Apply

1. Go to https://sportrelay.com/mlb/writer-application/ and fill out the application.
2. Go to https://sportrelay.com/mlb/mlb/writing-sample-submission/ and submit a writing sample. Your application will not be considered without a writing sample. You can write about a team or specific player, past or present. You can attach a link to an article you've previously published.