Unique job opportunity with GateHouse Media

[Howard Owens]

Here is a chance to do something completely different.

GateHouse Media is looking for two ambitious, entrepreneurial individuals to help us reinvent local journalism.

The ideal candidate:

* A recent college graduate (or graduating this spring)
* At least six months experience blogging
* Capable of shooting and editing his or her own video
* Ready to do more than sit in an office and make phone calls or pull the latest agenda item from a city council meeting and try to turn it into a story
* Believes in local news and local community and sees a role for journalism in helping a community communicate and learn about what is happening in that community

In this job, you will have a chance to define a new role for community journalists. You will be doing more than trying to shove five W’s and an H into an inverted pyramid. This job is about figuring out what a community of people really wants from its local community site.

What we’re looking for is people who can work on their own, willing to try new things and not be bound “that’s how it’s always been done.” You will be expected to be responsible for coming up with new ideas for your site, both in coverage and presentation, and for growing audience.

We will provide you with the technology and tools to get the job done. We will expect you to grow readership and participation.

Chances are you will be required to relocate.

Applicants should e-mail me at howens -at- gatehouse media (oneword) dot com.

[Dave Brooks]

* Ready to do more than sit in an office and make phone calls or pull the latest agenda item from a city council meeting and try to turn it into a story

Don't you love want-ad cliches, usually cranked out by people who haven't reported in years?

The above behavior certainly exists, but is usually born of story quotas - which have only grown more onerous due to the Web news cycle.

If you've got to create a certain number of publishable items in a certain short period of time, you can't spend ages "figuring out what a community of people really wants from its local community site." Follow that route and the cool hyper-local site will be hyper-empty while the staff is out taking the pulse of the community.

I don't think carrying a digital camera or blogging from your Blackberry changes this much.

[Ryan Sholin]

@Dave - I didn't write the want ad, but I certainly agree with the cliche.

I was the online editor in a newsroom where meeting stories were assigned, and all efforts to get reporters to put human beings in their ledes were met with the names of city council members instead of community members affected by votes.

This isn't about quotas; it's about actually talking with the people in the community who aren't elected officials or civil servants.

Is that so revolutionary?

[Disclaimer: Howard is my boss and I'll probably work closely with the folks who take those jobs.]

[Zac Echola]

@Dave - The Internet democratized communication.

We live in a world where conversation can scale from talking to a few friends on Facebook to turning into a national story and back again. It happens all the time.

We in media need to stop focusing on just the top tiers of communication. We have an amazing ability to open lines up with individuals in our communities.

If we don't do this, our communities will. And we'll be the ones who suffer.

I'm not saying hyper-local coverage should completely replace larger issues. But those issues can be completely lost on any communities that can't relate to the coverage.

[Meghan E. Murphy]

Is there anyone out there posting this job description for experienced journalists? I've done newspaper reporting for four years - including narrative feature writing, blogging, podcasting - plus I spent two years as an editor at dot coms (so I know about web presentation and circulation). I also can wield an SLR digital camera. I'd love to be a MoJo, but the opportunities all seem to be for those straight out of college... Is it a budget thing? Or do editors think my generation (30 yo) isn't as multimedia savvy?

[Elaine Helm]

@Meghan - They probably don't want to or can't afford to pay someone with more experience.

[Meghan E. Murphy]

That's what I figured also. But I think it's going to be tough for a brand new journalist to successfully go against "how it’s always been done." Don't you have to learn the basics before you can reinvent them?

[Zac Echola]

I didn't get the impression that the ad was youth-centric because of the multimedia angle, more that it seems pretty entry-level.

[Dave Brooks]

I found the ad annoying partly because of the predictable example of what they don't want: It could have been lifted verbatim from want ads when I started 25 years ago, and I'm leery of how much new thinking a company can do if its writing wallows in cliche.

Worse, however, is that the snarky aside implies they think bad journalism is solely due to lazy, unimaginative reporters, not to anything the company does. With that attitude, the company won't feel obligated to change - Not A Good Thing.

"Crank out that copy, but don't use traditional sources, and don't forget to film it, and we'll give you technology but no support (it's not a one-man bureau, it's redefining community journalism) and we'll sneer if we don't like you ("Jones just crams W's and H's into pyramids - pffft!") and how come you missed your audience metrics this week?!?!?"

Great ad, folks.

[Zac Echola]

Dave, a company is only as strong as its employees.

Positive change can and should happen without management approval or HR departments or want ads and can be facilitated increasingly through good use of free technology, without spending a dime.

Audience is just a group of individuals and to treat them as simply a vague and ethereal audience is doing them and yourself a disservice. As the community you facilitate and nurture through your beat (whatever it may be) grows, so do the metrics.

And who wouldn't want to grow their audience? Metrics tell us what we're doing wrong as much as what we're doing right. If there's news that needs to be told but people aren't taking note and giving us page views (quota or none), maybe we're not making the information useful and we should try another approach.

Metrics certainly don't mean we must turn into a gossip rag, as that misses the point of targeting and maintaining a niche. From a corporate standpoint, you want a portfolio of niches rather than a bunch of properties that only write about things that gain the most page views; A one-trick pony approach limits the ability to target advertising across many demographics.

Being bitter about an ad won't get you very far in accomplishing any goals or building a meaningful relationship with your readers.

[Howard Owens]

Dave, frankly, I very much come from the school that lazy reporting comes from lazy reporters, not from quotas, not from staff cuts, not from any company policy.

Quotas are nothing new. Short staffs and reporters with too much on their plates are nothing new. From a reporter's perspective, it's always been that way and will always be that way. I've never walked into any newsroom, no matter how many staff members, and not found people complaining about how short staffed they were. It's the boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome.

When I was at the Daily Californian, we had to write two or three bylined stories plus three or five briefs per day. And the reporters at the Union and the Tribune would bitch any time they were asked to do more than two stories a week. We just laughed at them.

And even with a quota, I found a way to do original, award-winning journalism (though my share of crank-um-out agenda items, too).

And the two-week reporters still turned out a lot of crappy, boring, council-agenda-driven stories.

Your reporting is only as good as your ambition makes it. Stop blaming management for what only you can control.

One reason I'm looking or recent grads is I want to avoid people who have had to sit in a cube next to the David Brooks of the world and start buying into all the bellyaching and negativity that goes on in a newsroom. It has nothing to do with money (@ Elaine). Money isn't the issue at all. Far from it. It has to do with not being corrupted by the newsroom attitudes at most daily newspapers.

If you can convince me you're not a product of traditional-thinking newsroom culture, then I would love to hear from you. I'm really looking for as few preconceptions of what a journalists should be as possible. At the same time, I lean toward a j-student, because some appreciation of the traditions, history and values of journalism will the the foundation for the new journalism.