Invest in editors and producers. #hireajournalist ?
substacks need editors 🤝 journalists need jobs
Every writer need an editor. Every content creator—from podcasters to TikTokers to TV series creators—benefits from an editor, or producer. With the overload of content coming at us from every direction, putting your best out there is a baseline expectation to set yourself up for success. The latest boom of Substack and long-form written content has made the need for an editor’s eye even more painfully obvious. And it’s not just because the writing can be stronger, it’s because the platform leads with the ability to monetize and—the clichéd elephant in the room—if someone’s going to pay for your work, it better be good.
As someone who comes from journalism—I started my career as an NBC Page, rose the ranks through NBC News and CNN as a producer, and am an alum of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I have a team working on
, writing and editing each other’s work, including my own. I’ve invested in this for years as a business owner because I’m paranoid about quality, but also because I want to make sure the archive of work we build holds value over time.At the same time—and kind of ironically—the demand for editors is going up while journalism careers keep trending down. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs for news analysts, reporters, and journalists are projected to decline by 3% over the next decade [despite the rising demand for credible, high-quality information]. Are you tracking my train of thought? There’s a real opportunity here on Substack [guys
, is my mic on!?] to input a freelance layer for editing services into the platform 🤝, but also for creators more broadly to bring editors into their workflow [and consider hiring journalists 👀]. I believe we would all benefit from a collective, higher quality product.***
If you’re not in the market to pay for editing support [we get it], here are some low-fi ways to help your fellow community members out and hopefully get some help in return:
Start a feedback swap - Think: writers group energy, but make it digital. Share a draft, get notes, return the favor. It’s like speed dating for better sentences.
Offer to give a post a second set of eyes [kindness is key] - No one’s asking for The New Yorker’s fact-checking department. But a quick “this sentence is confusing” or “you accidentally wrote ‘there’ instead of ‘their’” can be priceless. [Editors: your skills are wanted.]
Hype them up in Notes - A restack with a comment like “the ending of this made me GASP” or “wish I wrote this” goes further than you think [+ it’s free]. We’re all just algorithmically programmed to love a little public praise.
Share their stuff with your subscribers - The recommendation tool on Substack is your friend. And if you’ve got a loyal reader base, those recs hit harder than a quote tweet ever could.
Buy someone a coffee [literally] - No notes. Just a perfect, low-stakes way to say: “I see you, I like what you’re doing, here’s $5 for vibes and validation.”
Seven reasons every brand should be hiring former journalists
A couple of years ago, Brand, Content & Creative Consultant Lou Dubois advocated for why brands should hire former journalists on the MTD blog and his advice still very much stands today:
One of the things that’s most difficult when you work in news is that it’s hard to imagine yourself not working in news. For many, we spent significant time studying it (whether undergrad or grad school), and then practicing, learning, evolving, and applying those skills over many years, often across many cities, countries, news outlets and employers.
The good news: for brands and businesses in every other sector, this is an opportunity. An opportunity to recruit some incredible talent to your own workplace. An opportunity to bring truly unique talents and skills into your company. An opportunity to give someone a path forward they probably didn’t even know existed…
I’m here to tell you today why, if you have an opening, even if the background isn’t perfect or what you’d envision for that role, hiring a former journalist at your brand or business is one of the best hires you’ll ever make. It’s something I’ve done a lot of in the past 10 years, and almost every one of them has thrived.
1. Critical Thinking – Journalists have been trained to never accept something at face value. They know that asking “Why?” and “Why not?”, looking at multiple different perspectives, challenging conventional wisdom, digging for context, and thinking about broader impact makes any story better. Those same qualities will make your team, and your company, better thinkers.
2. Deadlines – You might think your company has crazy deadlines, but we’re talking about people whose entire professional careers have been driven by deadlines. Miss a deadline in news? It doesn’t happen. Some of the best advice my father ever gave me was “to be early is to be on time, and to be on time is to be late.” He was of course talking about showing up for meetings, but it was always applicable to me with news deadlines as well. If you tell these folks when something is due, you will get it.
3. Born to Multitask – If you’re a modern-day journalist, you’ve been asked to do more with less for your entire career. Journalists are writers, photographers, editors, videographers, often all at once. They’re filing for broadcast, for the web, (sometimes) for print, all while sending out real-time live updates on Twitter. And then when a new story breaks, they drop all that work they’ve done and start anew, all with that deadline looming. Journalists are some of the best multitaskers I’ve ever met.
4. Asking Great Questions – All journalists set out to find answers to the same essential questions:
Who is involved?
What is happening?
Where is it happening?
When is it happening?
Why is it happening?
How is it happening?
They also ask pertinent follow-ups when something doesn’t seem right or when that small detail in the press release seems more significant than others think, and have honed the amazing skills involved in interviewing, to get people to speak at length, often about difficult and complex topics. These questions will make your team, and your business, think differently about the way you do things and sometimes about what it is that you’re even doing.
***
“If you have an opening, even if the background isn’t perfect or what you’d envision for that role, hiring a former journalist at your brand or business is one of the best hires you’ll ever make.”
read the full piece here
Yes to all of this! It’s why I recently launched Word Doc. Love your low-fi suggestions, though. It’s definitely not for everyone, but the need is there!