Join the Crew
Five years and nine months ago, three fellow basketball nerds and USC alums started this podcast with high hopes and an idea to tell timely and nuanced stories by interviewing the journalists closest to the action, with an emphasis on team beat reporters and national writers covering the league. We’ve (and pardon the switch from third-person to first-) also conducted a number of book interview specials. The founding hosts included Loren Lee Chen, Joshua Fischman and Aaron Fischman, though a few years ago Joshua moved on to focus on other projects. Over the years, we’ve done incredible things, we’ve fallen short in some ways, we’ve learned, we’ve grown, and we’ve had loads of fun along the way, all the while amassing incredible experience and expanding our connections within the basketball journalism community.
((Over 157 episodes, we’ve brought on 110 different guests, and their total Twitter following is approaching 2.37 million. We’ve been blessed to interview some of the very best. While it’s impossible to name all of our favorites, some notable OTNB guests include Alex Kennedy, Jonathan Abrams, Holly MacKenzie, Sekou Smith (He was such a kind soul. Rest in peace.), Tas Melas, Howard Beck, Jake Fischer, Melissa Isaacson, Dave Zirin, Zach Harper, Michael Pina, Lang Whitaker, Kacy Sager, Adam Mares, Kelly Dwyer, Coral Lu, Harrison Faigen, Adena Jones, Seth Rosenthal, Jovan Buha, Michael Levin, Dan Devine, Max Rappaport, Sue Favor, Eric Pincus, Ian Levy, Keith Smith, Sam Vecenie, James Edwards, James Herbert, Katy Winge, John Karalis and Will & Grace co-creator David Kohan. For a comprehensive list, visit our six Interview Central pages sorted by season.)) We’re extremely proud of the show and look forward to its future as a vehicle to tell more illuminating NBA stories via our strong guest interviews.
At this juncture, we hope to transition into emeritus-like roles, where we help coordinate booking and mentor new contributors without being involved in the production every single week. Accordingly, we’re looking for talented, hard-working and hungry journalists who want to do what we’ve done. This opportunity is low-commitment to start and would begin early this offseason, around the start of August. To begin, you neither would need to record every week nor need to worry about audio editing the first show or two on which you appear. Unfortunately, the contributor position will be unpaid until the podcast turns a profit, but it will provide an excellent opportunity to build your portfolio with interview clips and, as mentioned before, gain experience, meet established reporters and show the basketball community and prospective employers what you can do.
For now, we’re looking for four to eight talented and passionate contributors to be involved for a span of 11 weeks, stretching from the start of August through mid-October (just ahead of the 2021-22 regular season). Continue reading