Author: Susan Kille
Published: December 02, 1998
Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Small newspapers

Real training tips from real editors

Finding money to train staff is a big problem at small newspapers. Working on that issue seemed a perfect assignment for ASNE’s Small Newspaper Committee, so we sent out an e-mail to members asking for low-cost training ideas. The thoughtful and encouraging responses included tips, case histories and handouts.

The committee plans to compile these ideas and others, and provide them to ASNE members. In the meantime, here is a sampling of ideas that work.

Turnover is painful at community newspapers when local knowledge goes walking out the door. Dick Schneider of The Jackson Sun in Tennessee has a suggestion. “We pack up the staff for a half-day bus tour, with doughnuts and drinks,” he said. Local historians serve as moderators, staffers ask questions and everyone leaves the bus with a sharpened sense of their community and its history. One popular aspect: The police reporter “would give the ‘death tour,’ pointing out the sites of the city’s most notable murders.”

Paula LaRocque of The Dallas Morning News said in-house mentoring is a no-cost program that papers of any size can use. The program teams staff members who have mastered skills in a particular area with other staffers who want to develop similar expertise. She suggests the two staffers meet for 60 to 90 minutes once a week for 12 weeks. She described it as an opportunity for self-starters, not a remedial program.

Roy Peter Clark of The Poynter Institute has been experimenting with a training structure that entails only the cost of a long-distance call. “If a small newspaper or college has a writing workshop, or a brown-bag lunch, I simply join the conversation via speaker phone,” he said. “If you can get the phone to work, I can hear everyone, and everyone can hear me. I’ve conducted more than a dozen conversations about writing this way.”

Being a vacation destination can stretch your training budget. Tom Conner of the Northwest Florida Daily News in Fort Walton Beach lured a journalism professor to his newsroom for a week. The professor spent four or five hours a day conducting brown-bag seminars on different topics each day and worked one-on-one with writers, editors and copy editors. “He even went on a couple of interviews and assignments with reporters, then played the part of writer’s coach,” Conner said. The cost? Less than $1,000 for travel and lodging.

Mike Schwartz of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution said there can be economy in numbers. If your paper is part of a group, you may be able to collaborate with sister papers for a regional session. “Share the expenses and each paper send as many staffers as it can afford.”

State press associations are another resource. For example, Linda Lightfoot of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., realized that writers needed help with math skills to report on the increasing emphasis on standardized tests to measure the performance of public schools. The Advocate worked through the Louisiana Press Association to plan a daylong session on how to interpret test scores and report them.

“The costs were minimal — sandwiches, a meeting room and travel reimbursement that most speakers were willing to waive,” Lightfoot said.

Teamwork increased when The Sun in Bremerton, Wash., had newsroom supervisors switch jobs for six weeks, Brian Stallcop said. The shifts were done in several rounds, he said, “so there was always somebody around who actually knew their job.” The cost? Nothing.

Larry Reisman of the Press Journal in Vero Beach, Fla., has success with another approach to having staffers understand operations outside their corner of the newsroom. Staffers can shadow people with other jobs in the newsroom for two full days.

Brown-bag lunches top the list of low-cost training programs. Serve what you can afford, but don’t skimp on the main course — content. Suggestions for brown-bag topics were plentiful. A taste:

• Use the best in-house talent you have. Did someone just ace an ambitious project? Who shines on basics such as interviewing, organization, profiles and covering a beat?
• Draft any staffers who have gone to outside training seminars. Give them an assignment to report back. Tell them to bring back copies of handouts and share what they have learned when they return.
• Find out when authors are coming to sign books and see if the author will stop by the paper. The discussion can be on the writer’s work or on writing itself.
• Local experts. Can local community college or university faculty shed light on issues in the news? Invite a firearms expert from the local police, a district attorney or others.
• A little help from your friends. Call on the friends and contacts you have made in the business. Bring in visiting journalists, writers and experts wherever you can get them.