As I posted earlier, I spoke today at the Inland Press Association annual meeting in Chicago on the expectations of young journalists, along with David Nelson, Kelly Mahoney and Jon Rubin. I’ll post more later, but for those young journalists, here’s a list of the pressing concerns on the minds of your future employers (necessarily paraphrased):
If you were editor-in-chief of newspaper with 50,000 circulation and 50 reporters, and you had one year to turn the paper around in a new media landscape, how would you do so from an organizational standpoint? Would you train your reporters? Would you hire new ones?
What is your dream job?
Do you believe that younger readers react differently to advertising as compared with an older generation?
In term of getting to know your audience, how would you go about that if you were writing for a small newspaper in a rural, homogenous, geographically dispersed community?
From small, community newspapers that struggle with high turnover, what characteristics would influence us to stick with smaller papers rather than move on?
What role should journalists play in the shaping of the end product?
Matt Bigelow 