Media firms seek young talent to replace veterans

Not exactly front-page news, but a quiet, noteworthy trend that will affect newspaper reporting/writing in the months ahead:  Younger staffers replacing seasoned talent.

After reducing paper width to conserve costly newsprint, then cutting or eliminating stock market and mutual fund lists, and, more recently, combining business sections into other parts of the paper, editors and publishers are going after younger, cheaper talent to fill slots vacated by veteran, more-expensive staffers taken off payrolls via layoffs and buyouts, observes Grumpy Editor.

Just-out-of-college young people, with little or no basic training (other than working on college newspapers), once started careers on dailies as copyboys or copygirls (as they used to be termed) with the title later upgraded to editorial assistants.

They learned the editorial routines and watched barking city editors in action.

How many now graduate with the basic five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and one H (how) imbedded in their journalistic training remains to be seen.  Some often forget the H.

Others may not get a street name correct.

Grumpy Editor recalls one young staffer on a Los Angeles daily --- who stumbled on the “where” --- once pinpointed an incident, that made it into print, as being “on Figueroa St.”  Problem is, Figueroa St. runs almost 30 miles from near Pasadena on the north, through downtown Los Angeles and southward to Los Angeles Harbor.

Nevertheless, New York’s Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where 400 students are enrolled, holds its annual job fair Saturday that is attracting 110 employers, the most in the 15-year history of the job search.

Companies seeking talent include magazines, TV outlets, online media companies and 18 newspapers such as the New York Post, Detroit News, USA Today, Newsday and The Village Voice.