Last Updated: January 26, 2000
Printer-friendly version
Hiring issues
Newspapers across the nation have found ways to cultivate
staffers in their communities and through outreach at universities
The solution for editors of smaller papers is obvious: Work harder and
develop more contacts to maintain a pool of prospects rather than waiting
until someone resigns.
Laura Sellers-Earl, managing editor of The Daily Astorian in Astoria,
Ore., says smaller newspapers can add to their list of prospective employees
by attending job fairs, particularly minority job fairs, and networking
with editors at larger newspapers in their region.
Sellers-Earl said Ken Bunting, editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
has been helpful in passing along to her paper names of P-I interns looking
for full-time jobs.
“There’s a value in opening discussions” with editors at larger papers
and other professional colleagues,” Sellers-Earl said, adding that the
more contacts you make the more productive the pipeline of resumes to your
newsroom.
Members of your own newsroom also can produce prospects. Sellers-Earl
said her paper hired its first person of color as a photographer after
the prospect met another Daily Astorian photographer at an Eddie Adams
workshop.
“It’s all in the connections,” Sellers-Earl said in recommending editors
do as much as they can to regularly get the word out about their newspapers,
not just when they’re trying to fill an opening.
Milwaukee’s assist
In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is acting as a clearinghouse
for state newspapers seeking recent graduates or experienced journalists.
The Journal Sentinel gets several hundred applications a year, but obviously
only hires a small percentage. It hopes by creating a network with other
state papers it can help smaller newspapers and budding journalists by
passing along resumes and cover letters to other Wisconsin newspapers.
Heidi Reuter Lloyd, the Journal Sentinel’s senior editor of administration,
is spearheading the effort. She will prepare one-paragraph summaries of
applicants ande-mail the information periodically to Wisconsin newspaper
editors who wish to participate. An editor who reads the candidate summary
sheet and wants to know more about a particular applicant can e-mail Reuter
Lloyd, who will in turn send the editor the applicant’s full resume and
cover letter.
The Journal Sentinel is not advocating candidates, since many of the
resumes it receives are unsolicited. The Journal Sentinel also will forward
the current Wisconsin Newspaper Association jobs bulletin to applicants
along with the letter confirming receipt of their application.
The Journal Sentinel’s top editors told a Wisconsin AP editors meeting
that all newspapers large and small have to do a better job of “selling
ourselves” to get talented people into the business. They urged their colleagues
to sponsor writing and photo contests in high schools, create job-shadowing
opportunities for high school students, critique stories for college students
and get out of the office to meet students and let them know about job
openings wherever they may be.
The Journal Sentinel hopes the program will work for all. The smaller
Newspapers will get leads on qualified reporters and editors whom the Journal
Sentinel doesn’t have room for, but in turn it is hoped that the Journal
Sentinel’s efforts will help keep good people in the business and raise
the overall quality of print journalism.
Thomson’s apprentices
Elsewhere in Wisconsin, Thomson newspapers in August started its first
20-member class at Thomson’s Oshkosh Northwestern to train community reporters
in its own 12-week program. Those selected may or may not be college graduates
and some enter the program without any formal journalism training.
“We’ve had everybody from 19-year-olds to 60-year-olds apply,” said
Bill Harke, editor of The Post-Crescent in Appleton, who sent out some
65 applications in the Appleton area after one news story. One ad in the
Post-Crescent seeking applicants for the program resulted in about 100
calls of inquiry.
Harke said applicants for the Post-Crescent’s opening were “all over
the ballpark — truck drivers, men and women wanting to start a second career,
nurses, teachers, recent college graduates, English majors, moms of kids
now ready to go to school.”
Thomson’s purpose, Harke said, is to train the students the way the
company wants them trained and to recruit local people who want to be journalists
at the local newspaper. It also is a recruiting tool, Harke said, because
of the problems smaller papers have filling openings. Thomson plans to
have three classes of 20 students per year. After completing the course,
the newspapers that nominated the candidates commit to having that person
on staff for two years and hopefully much longer, said Harke, who added
the program is patterned after a similar effort in England that proved
successful.
The reporters who come out of the program will give their respective
newspapers “a sense of community,” Harke said. “If you hire a woman who
has lived in Menasha for 27 years and knows 5,000 people in Menasha, that’s
5,000 stories,” adding there’s no substitute for the “localness of a resident.”
Copy desk solutions
Dave Fuselier, publisher of the Missoulian, a Lee newspaper in Missoula,
Mont., sees the copy desk as the most critical problem for the future of
newspapers large and small.
“One of the things Lee is doing is identifying good copy editors while
they’re still in college and providing them with scholarships and internships,”
Fuselier said. “If you establish contacts with juniors and seniors, you
have that connection when they come out.”
It’s important to encourage students when they’re younger, he said.
Not only do they need the money for their college expenses that scholarships
and internships provide, Fuselier said, “but it has the added advantage
of steering journalism majors into copy editing when they see the attention,
money and interships available.” Putting a bigger slice of the pie into
copy editing is the ultimate solution, he said.
Fuselier added finding qualified people hasn’t been a problem at the
Missoulian, in part because turnover is low and resumes are plentiful from
applicants attracted to the quality of life in Montana. Also, the economy
isn’t as strong in Montana as many other parts of the country, so the competition
for jobs is more intense, he said.
As for diversifying the newsroom, Fuselier said the Missoulian offers
a scholarship for a qualified Native American journalist to the University
of Montana, but added well-qualified Native American journalists usually
are quickly hired by newspapers in such cities as Seattle, Portland and
San Francisco.
“We’re not a very diversified newsroom, but we’re not a very diversified
community,” Fuselier said.
Huebscher is editor of the Leader-Telegram in Eau Claire, Wis.
