Publications need communication grads with traditional skills and tech savvy–Joanna Sullivan
Joanna Sullivan has spent much of her career as a reporter and editor of business publications. Her tenacity as an investigative reporter was one of the reasons I promoted her to editor of the Baltimore Business Journal.
Her career began before digital media dominated the industry. So I wanted to interview her and get her perspective on how the profession has changed, and how that affects how she recruits and hires journalists. We spoke via Zoom.
Savvy students
Each year, Joanna interviews students at the University of Maryland, her alma mater, as potential employees for her own newspaper and others in the American City Business Journals group of 44 publications. “I’m seeing a lot of great journalists, student journalists,” she said. “They are so savvy, so much more than we were.”
By savvy she meant that they had a range of skills across all media platforms and were undaunted by the new technologies. What hasn’t changed is that “they’re really focused on good reporting and writing.”
Joanna believes that many in the industry underestimate the opportunities available. She sees job openings advertised at high-quality digital publications like Axios, ProPublica, and many others. With so many more media competing for talent, salaries have become competitive, she said. “I see job openings at big dailies I never saw before. I see a ton of jobs, and not enough good people.”
What she looks for
For Joanna, the best candidates are curious, smart, and really want to know the answers to a question. They know how to take that information and turn it into a great story. That hasn’t changed.
She just hired an impressive summer intern. “She asked a lot of good questions about us, about what she would be doing, and she had some good ideas coming into the interview. She was very passionate about becoming a journalist and wanting to learn.” The intern is from Morgan State, in Baltimore.
The Covid-19 crisis has changed many aspects of the work. Joanna and her team have not been together in the newsroom for more than a year. Reporters are not allowed to go out for face-to-face interviews, although they do cover some press conferences. They use mobile phones to take their own photos and make audio recordings.
At one time, all of the newspapers in the national group experimented with video, “We realized we weren’t good at it. Our readers don’t really like to take time during the day to watch videos. There’s not a lot of exciting business video.”
Swarms of news outlets
The staff has a videoconference every day to discuss what to pursue. “We’re always looking for local news, things that will affect our business readers.” The print edition is weekly, “but now we publish all day every day.”
They have to because of all of the competition. In addition to old standbys like the Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Daily Record, and the nearby Washington Post, there are many online publications. On some beats, the Business Journal competes with Twitter users to be the first to publish a restaurant closing or other breaking news.
Speed isn’t everything. “We’re very focused on making news fair, accurate, and balanced. We’re under so much scrutinity,” Joanna said. There is a lot of anti-press sentiment in the US.
Health care, banking, and cannabis
The Baltimore Business Journal has nine people in the newsroom: four reporters, four editors, and a researcher, whose main job is to produce the weekly Top 25 lists. “Everyone produces content, everyone produces stories.” Page design has been centralized at the corporate level.
The reporting beats haven’t changed much: commercial real estate, the business of health care, health insurance (a big concern for employers because health care is privatized in the US), banking, and now cannabis, because of the emergence of the medical marijuana industry. Some local companies are involved in the production of vaccines for the corona virus.
Among the most popular topics these days, based on analytics, is the federal government’s Covid-related payment protection program for businesses, which is administered through banks.
Publishers everywhere are suffering
Among the negative impacts of Covid-19 is that advertisers all around the world have cut way back. “It’s a tough time to be in ad sales and publishing,” Joanna said. “Our salespeople are pulling their hair out.”
Another key part of the business was monthly events, which produced revenue from sponsorships and ticket sales. But the pandemic forced the Business Journal to take all events online. Sponsorship revenue and ticket sales have dropped. For the editorial department, which produces publications related to the events, such as Who’s Who in Law, or Leaders in Technology, there is a big investment in time.
Joanna said one bright spot was a major national online event by Bizjournals featuring Richard Florida, an urbanist. The event did very well in terms of revenue and viewership, she said.
One of the biggest changes in the past decade has been the reader interaction with reporters. Social media makes it easy for readers to comment on their work, and reporters can benefit by getting tips and ideas for followup. They have to be careful, though, not to get defensive or dragged into nasty exchanges.
The interaction “makes the job harder,” Joanna said. “You’re under scrutiny. But it makes you better.”
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