Preps Editor -- Pittsburgh (Pa.) Tribune-Review

Yeah, don't let that stop you. I went from a 12K pm paper to a nearly 190K (at the time) paper to do a job I'd never done. Weirder shit happens every day.

 

Are they still doing tabloid sports section? I know they started that right about the same time we did.

 

Yeah, it's the only portion of the paper that's tabloid.

And Padre, I want to make it clear I wasn't questioning your credentials (or anyone else's) based off of circulation numbers. If anyone thinks they've got the stuff for any gig, they should pursue it. I'm all for that. Just wanted to point out why they may be looking for someone with a certain level of experience and exposure.

 

That's a completely fair question. I think I have the background to talk about this, because I've gotten a pretty good look at hiring strategies and the such over the past few years.

The one thing you really want to do when you write an ad for this job is to lay down legitimate, but very stringent requirements. And here's why.

There are a lot of good, professional veteran sports deskers out on the streets or out of the business right now. And there are just as many 20somethings or 30somethings who have had some supervisory experience at a smaller paper and believe they're ready to move up. And they might be. Make no bones about it; this is a big-boy job. And it's a job a lot of young and old veterans alike would kill for.

If you write an ad that doesn't narrow the field considerably, the hiring editor is going to wind up with 225-275 resumes crossing his/her desk. Trust me. I've seen it happen when we've had a writing position, and we're a somewhat comparable circulation in the same state.

The hiring editor DOES NOT want that. They want 30-40 resumes of people who have been weeded out by those stringent requirements.

Frankly, I don't think I'd have the resume for it myself. I came to the conclusion a good long time ago that I'd rather be in the middle of things at 11:30 p.m. rather than in a planning meeting at 3 p.m. It's a very clear delineation. And if you haven't been doing your fair share of those blasted 3 p.m. meetings, I don't think you're in the group that they are wanting to come in for interviews.

 

I'll say it again, it's better for applicants as well. You don't want to just throw your app in with those 200+ others. Hiring editors will simply leaf through and pick you the most experienced ones anyway. And then you've invested hope and time into a contest you have next to no hope of winning.

 

I knew I'd seen something like that before. What were the chances I'd seen it on this thread? You're exactly right.

 

Actually, these days many publications are going the young and cheap route. Experience is a bad thing for a lot of papers because they don't want to pay for it. Sounds like the Trib is going against that trend, though.

 

It's still important for them not to have 250 resumes on their desk. Then again, establishing a salary is another way of sorting out the crop.

 

For the record, cuz isn't a word. This isn't a text message or Twitter, you can write the entire word.

 

A semicolon would work better after Twitter. Also, "for the record" is filler.

 

The jury is still out on that one.

 

If a staffer at The Trib is making only 30-35, that's a little odd, IMO. I know extremely smaller dailys that pay low-mid 30s for entry level in cheaper places to live.