WaPo Announces “Community Journalist” Position
As first reported on this channel a while back, the Washington Post is looking to undercut its existing reporting staff by creating a kinda junior reporter position.
The salary for these positions is in the range of $34,000, well below the starting minimum salary of a Post reporter and less than half of the newsroom average salary.
Check out the memo, though (it's cut and pasted below).
It states that the new reporters will be covering community issues and the like. OK, fine. It says the work of the "community journalists" will feed into the paper's local Extras. Again, fine.
But then it essentially emasculates the position and all those who may fill it: "While there may be occasions in which they work for the daily paper, they will seldom cover stories on larger regional and national issues."
Talk about inspiration! Gee, let me go right ahead and apply for one of these hot jobs.
The backstory behind that carefully selected language stems from contractual considerations. Post management wants to sneak this position into the rotation without making it subject to the minimum salary requirements of the paper's newsroom union, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. The line about seldom covering big stories reads like a legal maneuver to get around union protections. And perhaps a pretty clever one at that.
The announcement comes at a time of high anxiety at the Post. All week long, the place has been buzzing about what sort of cost-cutting initiatives may be in the pipeline. No word just yet on that front.
Metro News
Openings for New Community Journalists PositionsWe are very pleased to announce that The Post has created a new position to help us expand and improve coverage of local and community news in the Washington region. Employees in the new posts, called Community Journalists, will focus on writing stories for the Extras, and on multimedia work on local and community topics. They will report directly to Extras Editors. While there may be occasions in which they work for the daily paper, they will seldom cover stories on larger regional and national issues.
We are currently looking to hire several Community Journalists for suburban bureaus and possibly the District. We are looking for people with a strong interest and expertise in local affairs, a lot of energy and drive, and eagerness to learn. Some experience in journalistic reporting and writing is preferable but not required. It would also be a plus to live in the county or other jurisdiction that one covers. These positions would be a natural fit for some Editorial Aides who have already shown promise as writers.
We plan to fill these positions internally.
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3:31 pm
"We plan to fill these positions internally."
Now that's what got my attention--why no outsiders?
3:31 pm
why would anyone want to report exclusively on local and community news in the Washington region for less than 35k per year?
...
3:33 pm
Shit--take me, take me!
10:25 pm
Finally, you decide to cover...local news. Oh, Washington Post, only 15 years too late!
6:33 pm
Hey - don't knock the position. I literally do that job, for less money, at another paper. It's fun
7:33 pm
The humiliations are coming daily now. And where is the outrage? Every day hordes of journalists are cleaning out their desks at newsrooms around the country without a whimper while those who made the mess are getting bonuses, six-figure severance packages and jobs at PR firms and journalism schools, taking jobs that could have gone to decent, hardworking people. Everyone else is left to freelance (and I emphasize the "free" part of that) and be community (pretend) journalists. It's time to organize, unite and fight back. The enemies of journalism in our newsrooms must be extirpated.
7:53 pm
Characterizing the emphasis on local reporting as a union dodge isn't necessarily accurate. One of the Post's key failings in attempting to cover local news is that too many of its suburban reporters live in DC and spend too much time in the downtown office angling for front-page stories on larger national and regional issues.
The scope of this position makes clear the job expectations for reporters filling these roles. The community journalists will likely make the Post more effective at covering local news, and at a lower cost.
8:18 pm
Re previous post: Sorry, but I think we know where this is going. When an organization offers a new benefit plan, etc. for its employees, it's usually the organization that gets the better end of it and we all know what the other end is. It's always spun as a positive, but in this hostile journalism environment, nearly everything has been going against journalists--especially the ones who began their careers after 2001. You'll also notice that the ones who encourage cut-rate journalism and freelancing are the ones who have very nice salaries and benefit packages. (But then they're making the big bucks to follow orders, aren't they?)
8:32 pm
Erik, you've got it wrong. The community journalism jobs are the jobs of the future, the jobs with chache, the jobs that mean the most. Folks like the management of the Washington Post may not pay premiums for these jobs right now, but they will. Just you wait and see.
10:56 pm
Of course the organization will benefit from cheaper labor. But the scope of the job is where the Post should have gone a long time ago with its Metro staff.
10:31 am
Wayne Meyers wrote: "Everyone else is left to freelance (and I emphasize the “free” part of that) and be community (pretend) journalists." I have been a "community journalist" for more than 20 years, never covering a national story unless it happened in my community. I didn't realize I was pretending all along. I agree with Ash (and Ihope he's righ about the pay). Wake Up. People want the news that is happening in their communities as much as they want national and international news. It just might be what saves journalism.
1:26 pm
How about this part:
"It would also be a plus to live in the county or other jurisdiction that one covers."
Um, are you telling me that these "community journalists" don't really need to live in the communities they're going to be writing about? How, exactly, would they then write about local or niche stories relevant to that community?
And the part about filling the positions internally--does this mean that the Post will ONLY be hiring for these jobs internally? In other words, also not from the communities they're going to cover--or will they just be covering communities in which the editorial aides live?
Also interesting that this memo makes it sound like this is a junior reporter position that will lead to bigger things; according to a letter that Jay Kennedy, VP of labor at the Post, sent the Post's guild, "community journalists should not be expected to be promoted to "reporter." Well, then what's the point?
If you ask me, this is the Post's way of testing the waters to see whether expanding this business model might be the thing that can save the paper. Namely, user-generated content--which is what readers want--that "community journalists" and bloggers are willing to provide for cheap or even for free. You get a bunch of junior reporters writing compelling, relevant content and/or providing multimedia elements and suddenly readership is up and payroll costs are down--oh, and local businesses are willing to pay for ads targeted at people interested in their specific community. Sounds like a win-win for the Post.
2:35 pm
Yeah I second Charlie's comment. I do this right now for much less than $35k for a weekly. Our paper is really struggling financially right now, which totally sucks, but other than that I love it. We cover all the stuff the Post can't care about and we do it really well. Why the Post didn't just do this from the get-go when they were establishing their Extra sections is a mystery.
4:45 pm
Marc, my apologies to you. I didn't mean that those covering local news, or true community journalists, were "pretend" journalists. Newspapers are creating the ambiguity and are rapidly diminishing the profession's credibility and mocking the expertise journalists acquire reporting on their beats, such as the chain of weekly newspapers in Canada that laid off its paid journalists, intending to fill their papers with the work of people willing to work for free. A better example is a large daily in my region of the country that began a "community film critics" endeavor months ago. What does journalism mean anymore if everyone's a journalist and everyone's a theater, opera, film, etc. critic? It's a perverse twist on "I think, therefore I am." How can you call, for example, a person a critic when they review a Shakespeare play and have no idea how the director altered the play by cutting dialogue, scenes, characters, etc. Professionalism and expertise are being replaced by the banal, and that is now the accepted, "dumbing-down," cheerleading norm. Newspapers are in a race to the bottom.
9:59 pm
This is a great idea. Anyone who covers community news should feel nothing but pride. And young journalists are the future. To describe the Post's desire to look for talented, young reporters who are willing to cover unglamorous local news "banal" and "dumbing-down" seems extremely short-sighted and self-important. News, whether local or international, requires the same basic skills. And at some point you have to accept reality. There's not enough money to support the old product, the "experience." There's also no incentive. There's no market for it; not enough people want to read it. It's time for innovation. For the next decade, while newspapers dig themselves out of this mess, the Post will be training the next generation of reporters, who can help find a way to speak to this generation. To start them out as community reporters sounds damn smart. They'll learn the nuts and bolts on a small, manageable scale. They'll get a chance to prove their potential. They'll probably prove that hyper-local is profitable. If not, they'll show the Post what is the future. This may be the end for you and yours, but it's not the end of journalism. It's just the beginning for a new generation of journalists.
9:07 am
Where in my posts did I say that looking for talented, younger reporters was banal and that covering local news was unglamorous? When were young journalists never the future? You've also made it an age issue. Do you discriminate on the basis of age? And when did I ever deride legitimate journalists covering local news? I did confuse for a moment "citizen journalists" with "community journalists" and I regret that. But there is a huge difference between the two. Do you think that everyone is a journlaist now? There used to be a time, not too long ago, where you had to meet certain standards, follow certain guidelines, training etc., to be a journalist. How do you define a journalist today? Anyone who wants to be one? Does blogging make someone a journalist? What is a journalist? But I'll try to make my point one last time. Music, art, theater, opera and film critics have been laid off in droves at papers around the country--most of them well-trained, seasoned arts journalists. Are you suggesting that what has replaced them (if anything has replaced them) is better? Do you think that laying off these people--young and old--was a good thing because they were part of "the old model?" Since when is expertise ever part of an "old model?" Do you really think it's acceptable to replace what they provided with the work of people who are not arts journalists (and this is my point: THEY ARE NOT JOURNALISTS) because they'll write for free? I have no problem at all with starting reporters out covering local news as long as they actually are reporters and journalists. And I would be very careful about praising what is happening in newsrooms right now. Journalism is becoming an unpaid profession and it's not just print. In Syracuse, N.Y. a week ago, a TV station suddenly closed, putting its staff out of work, no doubt in the view of some a necessary evil to make way for the "new order." And personally, I would think very carefully about supporting whatever the slogan of the day happens to be without considering the implications. They may be coming for you next, and I doubt that being "young" will save you.