First the lead: Tony Hernandez, who graduated a year and a half ago says:
I’m still looking for a reporter. The guy we interviewed declined the job today. If there are any good, recent graduates looking for a job and willing to pick up and move, have them send their resume’s and clips my way. This is a great opportunity for self-confident reporters that don’t need their hands held and looking to pay their dues in this industry. I’m looking to move on this quickly.
Tony is now the managing editor of the Southwest Times in Liberal, Kansas. E-mail him at news@swdtimes.com
Now for the rest of his story:
You wrote in December about journalism graduates working in newspapers. I landed my first job as a journalist a year from next week. I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ve seen first-hand how tough it is to land a job even at small-town newspapers.
A while back you wrote about Lise Olsen. It’s great your class got to meet her. I met her at an IRE training in El Paso last year. I got some great tips from her on covering border/immigration issues. I was working for the Rio Grande Sun in New Mexico at the time. Sadly, I didn’t get to do much in border/immigration stories and stuck to covering education, but I’ve kept everything I’ve learned from that training. Hopefully one day I’ll get to the border. I do recommend that your students join IRE. It’s a great wealth of knowledge. They’ve got thousands of useful tip sheets among many other things. But I’ll be honest, I mainly use the tips sheets.I got hooked on IRE thanks to Chase Davis and his CAR and investigative classes. As far as what I’ve been doing for the last year, I started at the Rio Grande Sun in New Mexico, thanks to you, David McHam and Chase Davis. I’m very grateful. However, I lasted about four months. It wasn’t a good fit for me. I was lured with the investigative aspect of the position, but in my opinion, it was a very cynical paper and it didn’t focus much on the positive aspects of Española. I felt like it entirely focused finding corruption. A quality in a newspaper, but it shouldn’t be the only. I was expected to cover five school districts and a junior college. I had to write 10 – 12 stories a week, and I had a boss that frequently lost his temper. Some of the reporters that worked there strive on that kind of stress; I did not. Still in the four months I was there, I learned a ton about developing sources and requesting public records. After Española, I landed a job in Liberal, Kansas. The Southwest Times is a small paper, a small editorial staff in a small town. Today the editorial staff is composed of four reporters, including me. The cool thing about this job is that I’ve moved up quickly. Weeks after being hired, I was given the news editor title. Our managing editor left a few months ago. In December, I took over as managing editor, but I still consider myself a reporter. I’m a reporter that’s in charge of the newspaper’s entire editorial content. I’m actually getting ready to hire one more reporter and this newsroom will be full for the first time in two years. On a side note, I’ve been giving my reporters copies of “The Middle Way” handout you gave me in class. It’s one of my favorite reads in how to put together a feature story. I’ve stuck with covering education, but I’m also covering the city. Local governments and their political leaders are polite, but not really used to scrutiny. The city’s administration is not used to public records request. I’ve won a few battles, but I’ve lost a few too, especially when it comes to electronic records.To put it bluntly, Kansas sunshine laws suck.
The other unique aspect about Liberal is that we have a competing newspaper. We publish three times a week. They publish six days a week. There’s been a tumultuous history between both newspapers and it gets nasty. Recently, my newspaper, indirectly me, was called unethical: a complete lie. We always take the higher road and never respond to their op eds and house ads. The fight between both newspapers is fascinating story to me. One that’s too long to type right now, but one that I’m happy to share if you’re ever curious. Competing with another newspaper (out-scooping them, and out-reporting them) has been, and continues to be, a great experience.
Still, I know I have a lot to learn about our craft, our business, and how newspaper’s work. I’m humbled in that my boss sees potential in me as managing editor, but I sometimes wonder if someone with more experience would be better suited. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ll take it and do my best. I see myself in Liberal through the year, before I start looking to move on. I’m anxious to move onto a bigger city with a bigger newspaper.