The qualities you'd prioritize when hiring journalists

All good stuff, and will add “soft skills.” My wife and I both run our own companies and that is the biggest thing we both look for. Looking back, I wish newspapers/media did a better job of that. There were so many people at every stop that I worked with that had absolutely no soft skills. I honestly wonder what the heck management was thinking. There were people who were obviously talented, but lacked almost any ability to function at their job because they didn’t know how to relate to people.

 

Like, just being relatively normal, not overly intense people?

 

Basically, but it’s also little things like how to answer a desk phone, sending emails with a good subject line, ability to eat in public, cutting the tag off a blazer, washing their hands after using the bathroom, cleaning up their own messes, etc.

my wife works in hospitality so she more of the fails on these than I do, but sometimes I am shocked by my own team.

 

I love it. And it's true.

Obviously your wife knows what's happened in the hospitality business so she doesn't have to be told, but I'm shocked by the lack of it these days.

 

Research and fact-checking skills!! Knowing the most reliable sources. Knowing how to get sources to talk to you.
For podcast: razor sharp interview skills - and (please oh please for the audience's sake) podcast editing.
Other than that - someone who has a good command of world or local history, literature, law... and a foreign language is always a plus.

 

My theory is that as we pushed people away from manufacturing, we pushed a lot of people into jobs they had no rights doing.

That’s my theory for myself. I thought because I was well-read, I’d be a good reporter. Turns out writing is about sixth down the list of required skills.

Building things and not having to talk to anyone turned out to suit me much better.

 

For signs that he/she/pronoun/non-binary is good on the fly and likes to run thru walls.

 

We had an intern two summers ago who sipped hot chocolate through a straw and ate baby food packets. I had to tell her while it was no problem to me, but never do that in front of clients and that in a larger office setting that it would be odd.

 

A good question for that would be to ask what is the dirtiest job they ever had to do. You learn a lot about an upbringing. Some will launch right into stories of mucking horse stalls or mopping up vomit at the grocery store. Some will look at you and have no idea what you mean.

 

If I were hiring a beat writer, I'd want stories that prove their bullshit detector is sharp.

If teams, conferences and leagues decide that the restricted access of the pandemic era should become the norm, as I suspect they will, I'd want you to show me how you are going to get stories that no one else will have and that everyone on the beat will wish they had. Maybe it's working around an SID or a PR person to get that interview. Maybe it's the public records that reveal what a school is trying to hide. Maybe it's the economists that demonstrate how the "economic impact analysis" for a taxpayer-funded stadium is bullshit.

 

My small paper has been very fortunate to always have one of those on staff, and in my experience they are an invaluable asset to the operation.
Currently it's a part-time features/magazine writer whose copy isn't always the cleanest but she works hard and doesn't mind rushing out to a wreck or a fire or even a crime scene if needed. Most importantly, she grew up here and has been in a lot of the various social circles for years, so she's got the deep local connections. She can make a couple of phone calls and dig up a number for you, or grease the wheels with somebody who might be hesitant to talk. She knows where some skeletons are buried. She might be the MVP of our newsroom.

 

This.
So much this.
THIS.
The give-a-damn gene is not a given.
But give me someone with give-a-damn, and I'll exert myself tremendously to help him/her.