City of Basketball Love

CoBL Staff (@hooplove215)
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Calling all sportswriters in the greater Philadelphia area!

CoBL is looking for writers, especially those interested in covering the local girls’ and women’s game, to join our growing group of contributors. Since 2012, CoBL has covered the Pennsylvania high school and college basketball scene, expanding greatly over the years, and as of 2021 will now include girls’ and women’s coverage.

Earlier this month, we announced a relaunch as a nonprofit corporation, and the return of CoBL to full-time coverage status following several years of part-time coverage and the COVID pandemic. We’ve seen an immediate jump in our site traffic, Patreon support and donations, and with the relaunch of our CoBL Events coming this fall, we have the ability and interest to expand our list of contributors and bring more quality hoops coverage to the Philadelphia area.

So we’re looking for writers interested in paid freelance work, hoping to write anything from features to game stories, recruiting pieces, and more. Our paid opportunities are open to current college students with sports journalism experience, as well as more veteran writers who are looking for some freelance work. 

The CoBL staff also welcomes high school or college students interested in sports journalism who don’t have any experience to join the staff as our interns. CoBL interns learn how to be sportswriters and modern-day communications professionals from our editorial staff and contributing writers; while our internships are unpaid, our interns are getting hands-on tutoring on numerous skills that will help with their career, and many of our interns move into paid contributor status once they’re able to produce their own work at the level of quality we expect.

Over the nine years of its existence, CoBL has sent dozens of its former writers on to continue their journalism careers, whether that’s our college writers getting professional jobs or our high school writers going to college to study journalism (or similar areas of study) at some of the nation’s top communications programs.

Interested? Email us at cityofbasketballlove@gmail.com. Please include an introduction, resume and writing samples. For high school or college students looking to intern with us, if you don’t have any sports journalism writing samples, any class paper or news article you’ve written will work.
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Who you’ll be working with:

Josh Verlin, Editor-in-Chief

One of CoBL’s co-founders, Josh has been running the organization since its inception. A graduate of Temple University with a degree in broadcast journalism, he made CoBL his full-time job after leaving Temple’s Beasley School of Law in early 2013, developing it into the area’s go-to source for high school and college basketball news and information. Since then, he’s covered thousands of games and events while mentoring well over 100 high school and college students who have contributed to CoBL over the years. He currently lives in East Falls with his wife, Aurora, and their two cats, and is studying for his Master's degree in communication at Syracuse University.

Kate Harman, Assistant Editor

Kate wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 2010-2017, working as the beat writer for boys’ and girls’ soccer, girls’ basketball, and softball for the Southeastern Pa. area. There, over 150 different schools and 11 leagues were in her coverage area. After leaving the Inquirer she continued her passion for local basketball when she started Beyond the Arc through suburbanonesports.com, an endeavor that lasted two seasons. Harman has taught at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., since 2013, where she has been a member of the Communication Studies department. She also teaches courses in the Sports Communication and Media program, a major she helped launch in 2018.

Christy Selagy, Assistant Editor 

Christy first got into sports writing in 2015, covering St. Joe's baseball and softball teams for the student newspaper and went on to serve as sports editor. Since then, she has photographed various events and games for St. Joe's, and wrote feature stories on the men's basketball team for multiple seasons. She also briefly wrote a high school swimming notebook for the Courier-Post. Originally from Kennett Square, Christy graduated from St. Joe's with a bachelor's in English and communications studies in 2016, and a master's in writing studies in 2017.