Interested in writing for Golden State of Mind? Here's how to apply.

Golden State of Mind is looking for passionate Golden State Warriors fans to join our team and help us with the daily work of facilitating community discussion about the team we love while others look at them as a villainous super team.

So if you're eagerly searching for a public outlet to share your thoughts about the Warriors and support from a team of people while doing so, read on to find out how to apply!

Who we're looking for

• Fans with strong opinions, a sense of humor and unique perspectives about the team, which they are able to express effectively and defend persuasively in writing.
• Clear thinkers with the ability to identify significant stories, synthesize information quickly, and concisely articulate the impact of news events on the team.
• Quantitative minds who can clearly explain basketball analytics to a casual fan.
• Emerging writers who want greater exposure for their work and take genuine pride in their writing and ideas.
• Team players who want to contribute to the continued growth and improvement of Golden State of Mind.
• Community members interested in making Golden State of Mind a more inclusive place for minorities, women, and people of all cultures, religions, and sexual orientation.
• Basketball minds that are enthusiastic about ALL THINGS Warriors.

What we're looking for

As usual, we're not in a place of dire need for writers right now, but I always love to strengthen our team if there are talented writers out there in the world looking for exposure and think they can contribute to the betterment of our site. And for the first time, we’re publicly offering a paid position in addition to the unpaid contributor positions.

Unpaid positions

Although I’ll always find space for talented writers, the roles we’re most interested in filling this year are as follows:

• Analytics/statistics-driven commentary (e.g. data analysis, advanced statistics, and data visualization)
• Copy editing
• Daytime news commentary
• Draft geeks
• Gameday coverage (e.g. previews, recaps, highlights)
• Video/multimedia skills
• Salary cap expertise
• Sneaker heads...because...Anta…?

The bottom line is that anything at all that you believe would help Warriors fans in sharing their enthusiasm with others through what they read on this site is welcome. The more creative you are in sharing your love for the Warriors, the better off the community is.

Social media intern

Our social media presence has grown considerably over the past couple of years season with 27,000+ Twitter followers and 450,000+ Facebook likes. But in order to further improve our use of social media, we’re looking for a Social Media Intern to train with the opportunity for a paid position in the future.

The ideal applicant will possess strong knowledge of the Warriors media landscape, including the various media outlets and blogs online. The successful candidate will be responsible for monitoring and posting on our social networks, assisting in the promotion of GSOM content, and conducting keyword analysis for maximum reach. In the process, the social media intern will learn best practices for using Facebook and Twitter, how to optimize web content for use on those platforms, and what type of content performs most effectively. Those looking to gain valuable social media experience with a group of diehard fans are encouraged to apply.

Paid position: Lead news writer

As much as I enjoy working with our existing core of contributors to provide analysis, features, previews and recaps, we’re now looking for a point person to lead our effort to respond to news items about the Warriors in a timely fashion as they happen during the day. This may include reactions to everything from breaking news to injury updates to reactions to provocative articles about the Warriors in the national media. This role is perfect for a self-starter who has a schedule flexible enough to keep up with Warriors news and commentary on a regular basis during daytime hours on weekdays (9-5 p.m. PST Mon-Fri) and can quickly articulate opinions in writing.

For more on that position, please click here to check out SBN’s job board. In order to apply for that position, you have to take two steps:

1. Complete the application on the SBN job board.
2. Send me an email with the information requested below.

Qualified applicants for the position will receive correspondence from SBN first and a group of finalists will be directed to me.

How to apply

1. Tell me about yourself: Send me an email stating your interest in joining the GSoM team, including the following four things:

• Make the subject line: "GSoM application: [your last name]"
• Clearly indicate what position(s) you’re applying for (e.g. Unpaid contributor, lead news writer, or social media intern). If you intend to apply or already have applied for the paid position via the SBN job board, please indicate that as well.
• Describe how you will contribute to making the GSoM team more successful based on what you know about our site/staff/social media presence.
• Describe what you hope to gain from joining the GSoM team.

(1a. If you're already an active member of our community, please include your user name as well so I know who you are and can review your genius comments of the past.)

2. Show me a writing sample: I always get a lot of really strong applicants, so writing samples always go a long way in sorting out who I might to add to our team. You have two options for writing samples:

• Send me links to 2-3 published writing samples about the Warriors that represent the type of contributions you imagine yourself making to GSoM. Those samples could be published work about the Warriors at another blog/site OR FanPosts you've written here at GSoM. Either way, please try to pick articles about the Warriors that actually resemble what you'd like to contribute to GSoM.

OR

• Attach a brief written response to the following question:

"Which of the new additions (Jordan Bell, Omri Casspi, Nick Young) or expected departures (Matt Barnes, Ian Clark, James Michael McAdoo...JaVale McGee?) has been the most significant of the Warriors' offseason so far?"

(If you have writing samples that are not about the Warriors that illustrate more about your writing ability/style, feel free to send them along with a response to the question above — it's always interesting to see the breadth of one's writing ability, but it doesn't help me if I don't know how you think about the Warriors.)

3. Should you send a resume? Every year I do this, people send me resumes, which is generally a great practice for any job search. Yet, for this particular situation, I do agree with Aline Lerner's point about resumes that, "Very smart people, who are otherwise fantastic writers, seem to check every ounce of intuition and personality at the door and churn out soulless documents."

Yikes! That doesn't sound too helpful when actually looking for writers!

If you believe that sending a resume will do a better job of illustrating something you've said about yourself in Step 1 above, feel free to send it along (if you have a super-duper 21st century video resume, definitely send it — we'd love to see your creativity!). But you won't be penalized for withholding a staler version of yourself — I'm obviously looking for more than that.

When we want to complete the process

The deadline to submit an application -- paid or unpaid -- is 9 a.m. PST on Saturday, August 12, 2017. I will respond to everyone who applies shortly after that date about my decision and/or next steps.

Of course, we'd love to find people who listened closely to all of their elementary school teachers' sentence diagramming lessons and write pristine prose, but what we really want to see is passion, (tasteful) humor, and an ability to organize and defend ideas. There are no right answers or expectations of needing to be optimistic or pessimistic about the team (you've probably noticed that our current staff runs the gamut in that regard), but creativity and style is certainly preferred.

If you've come this far, thanks for considering this and I hope you apply! Even if you don't want to become a formal contributor to GSoM at this, but do have thoughts you want to share, you're always free to voice your opinions in a FanPost — there's always plenty to discuss about the Warriors and we want to make this a space that encourages the free flow of ideas about the team.