We're hiring a Staff Writer

Back in 2020, around the time Jack Grealish was staggering out of a lockdown sesh with one shoe on, The Upshot was born with a simple plan: to celebrate sport’s funniest stories.

Since then, we’ve made it our unhealthy obsession to report everything from Jens Lehmann’s crime spree to the simmering sexual tension in the French football team.

And we’ve attracted hundreds of thousands of fans who send us stories, pay to see our live shows, and ridicule our haircuts.

And now we’re hiring a Staff Writer to join our team.

If you dream of spending your 9-5 writing jokes about Richard Keys or digging up the forgotten tale of Maradona doing coke in the Pope’s bathroom, then this is the job for you.

The role

As a Staff Writer, you will unearth the funniest stories in sport for our newsletter subscribers and new fans on social media.

And by joining an ambitious, profitable media company early on, you’ll experience the intoxicating feeling of growing an audience and launching new projects.

Responsibilities: You will spend half the week finding and writing stories for our 100,000 email newsletter subscribers.

For the remaining time, you will grow The Upshot’s audience by writing stories for social media, especially Twitter.

You’ll also contribute to our podcast.

Pay: £35,000-40,000 per year, dependent on experience.

This is a full-time role with occasional remote working. Our office is in Hammersmith/Kensington Olympia, London. Hours are 9am to 5pm.

The ideal candidate is:

• A sharp writer with a great sense of humour.

• A big sport fan, with an appreciation for gossip, drama and controversy.

• Motivated by building a huge audience.

About The Upshot

The Upshot spills the stories BBC Sport won’t touch with a bargepole: drunken antics, dressing room squabbles and the simmering sexual tension in the French football team.

Our email newsletter and podcast are greedily gobbled down by 300,000 fans every month.

We’re profitable and we are aggressively building The Upshot into a major force in sports media. After that, we’ll use the same formula to launch into other areas.

A few useful links:

• A round up of our favourite stories in 2023.

• An archive of our recent newsletters.

• The Upshot podcast.

To apply: 

Find a funny story from the world of sport this week and write it in Upshot style in 100-150 words for our newsletter. Send it to [email protected].

If you’re not familiar with our newsletter, make sure you read some past editions (links in section above).

It won't be published - it's just to give us a sense of your writing style.

Deadline: Friday 18th October 2024.