Bits and Pieces

Finding and keeping good people

"It would be very easy to have a little pity party every time somebody leaves, but I try to look at it as an opportunity to bring in somebody new who's going to have new ideas, excitement, enthusiasm."

Diane Barney, editor of the Vacaville (Calif.) Reporter, quoted in American Journalism Review, March 2003. Tim Porter's article, "Vacancies in Vacaville," examined why small newspapers have an increasingly tough time recruiting young journalists.

The 'relevancy gap'

From the same AJR article: The Cox Center's latest annual journalism survey shows that fewer than one in 10 college journalism/mass communication students emphasize print journalism. Just four years earlier, one in five did.

Blame part of it on what author Porter calls a "relevancy gap." It's no secret that fewer and fewer young people read newspapers. So, it stands to reason that fewer college students would be drawn toward newspapers as a career choice.

So, the places students get their news - broadcast and new media - are emerging as more popular courses of study. While the newspaper diehards still exist and succeed, other students see it as akin to preparing for a career in VCR repair.

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