Find opportunities in upheaval

I recently received an e-mail from a journalist describing herself as "discouraged."

She's a reporter from a mid-sized paper who had attended one of my seminars. She complained that her paper "has started to cover more and more ... well, cheesy things instead of news. We have a new editor and it seems like now the goal of the paper isn't to inform, but to please the wealthy, the advertisers and the events the (newspaper) sponsors. ... We look like a high school paper. I have friends at larger papers ... and they're feeling the same way about their papers that I am about mine. I feel like I worked my way through J-School just to write for a giant newsletter. Are there any good, honest, news-seeking, well-designed papers left out there?"

Yes. I work with lots of good, honest, news-seeking, well-designed papers, large and small. I don't want to name names here because I know I'd leave out some good ones. But I want to make three important points about pursuing a satisfying career in the news business:

• Satisfaction doesn't come from where you work. Satisfaction comes in the work you do and in your approach to it. You can do great work at a newspaper that isn't great.
• The transition our business faces is going to mean lots of changes. They won't all be good and they won't all be the right changes. But change presents opportunity.
• Powerful storytelling is as important to the future of the news business as it is to our past. I don't know of any editors who aren't looking for stories that connect with readers.

I decided I wanted to remain in this business, but I learned to commit my passions more for the work and less for the workplace. I recalled what a colleague told me an editor had told him once: "You can love a newspaper but it will never love you back."

Over the next dozen years or so, I worked for good papers, but they weren't as good as the papers I had worked for earlier in my career. But I enjoyed work more because my joy came more from the work itself. I found you can do good work almost anywhere. Great work really stands out at a paper that's only pretty good or mediocre.

Our business is undergoing a wrenching transition that has many journalists asking questions like those my friend is asking. News organizations need to find new ways to build audience as our traditional audience fragments. Some editors will try foolish things in honest efforts to connect with readers. Some editors will try wise things that some journalists won't like.

I encourage my friend and other journalists who are dismayed with their current organizations to tell the best stories you can in the situation you face. Innovation in technology and in our business model will give us more tools for storytelling. I've seen some powerful interactive storytelling that combines the best of traditional journalism with the best of multi-media and interactive technology.

Whatever changes are happening at your paper, if you can come up with creative ways to tell stories and to help readers find their own meaning in your stories, your value to your editors will grow and you will find opportunities to tell stories that you find satisfying.

And let me say a word in defense of cheesy stories, or at least stories that feel cheesy when they are assigned. The best reporters find great stories in some of their cheesiest assignments. You'll find some tips (and links to some examples) in the handout for my workshop, "Make Routine Stories Special."

At a meeting of the Wyoming Press Association, I heard Ernie Pyle Award Winner Brady Dennis of the St. Petersburg Times (one of those still-great papers, by the way) talk about covering the "hidden beats." Jim Sheeler of the Rocky Mountain News, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his series "Final Salute" told how he developed his skills by writing obits about people who had never been in the paper before.

Some of the beats he likes covering: traffic court and small claims court, county fairs and interesting obits. Those are the kinds of stories that most reporters would recoil at covering. But this great reporter gravitates to them and writes prize-winning stories. You might roll your eyes at having to profile a toll collector. But check out Brady's profile.

If your paper is pushing for shorter stories and you think that will keep you from telling great stories, note also that this is part of a series called "300 Words," in which Brady tells great life stories in just 300 words. Click the link and read some other stories in the series.

If a lot of crap is going on at your newspaper, look past the crap to find the opportunities. If you can't find the opportunities, look for opportunities at other papers.