03.10.15
by

I’m hiring: Come work with me to create the future of local news

Update: I wrote this post in 2015. Seven months after I wrote this post, my position was eliminated. Don’t worry. I had a Plan B, C and D, and it all worked out better than I could ever imagined. I am building information companies for the 21st Century. 

Just a little over a year ago, I started as executive editor over two Gannett newspapers, the Sheboygan Press and the Herald-Times-Reporter in Manitowoc Wisconsin. As of Monday, I’ve added two more titles to my stable, The Northwestern in Oshkosh and The Reporter in Fond du Lac. We are the newly formed Lakes group of newspapers.

I’ve put a lot of time and thought into how these newspapers will work together going forward, and if there is one thing that I have learned in my first year, our success is based on building strong relationships with our communities. We will have a laser light focus on high impact journalism and high engagement with our communities.

This focus is why we grew our audience last year in Sheboygan off the back of incredibly strong digital growth. That’s right, our audience grew, based on Scarborough data. That growth is supporting commercial success too. I’ve got just about the best commercial teams that anyone could ask for, and the Herald-Times had some of the best financial performance of any newspaper in all of Gannett’s Central Group last year. More than that, the HTR also just took top honours for the second year in a row in the Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards, sharing the award with our sister paper in Marshfield. That’s success no matter how you measure it.

No, my papers aren’t the New York Times or the BBC, but if you come and work with me, you’ll be working with someone who has been at the forefront of journalism innovation for decades. I was the BBC’s first online journalist outside of the UK. I was The Guardian’s first blogs editor, and after striking out on my own, I built a global media consultancy with my wife, the British social media pioneer, Suw Charman-Anderson. I worked with Al Jazeera on their social media efforts during the Arab Spring, and Suw and I helped launch a ground-breaking digital news service, Firstpost.com, in India in 2011. Last year, I came home to the Midwest to help create the future of local journalism, one of the most interesting challenges there is in media.

Our newspapers may not be big, but I run them like start-ups. There is zero distance between idea and execution in my newsrooms. Sell me on the idea and why we need to prioritise it, and we’ll find a way to do it. We have constraints, but if you learn to innovate here, you can do it anywhere. Constraints just make success all that much sweeter. Give me a couple years of your career, and there will be no limit to where you’ll go.

That’s my elevator pitch for why you should come work for me, and now I’ll briefly detail the roles. I’m looking for three newsroom leaders who are autonomous, creative, energetic and have a passion for community engagement. In addition to duties across the group, you will be the top editor in each newsroom. You will have to travel around to the other sites to keep in touch with your staff, but you won’t have to be in constant motion – that’s my job.

I’m also looking for several experienced reporters. (Experience in this context could be a year or two if the experience is right, but it can be more.)

I also have one entry level reporting position.

If you have any questions, drop me an email kanderson2 at gannett dot com. These are great opportunities. If this challenge sounds right for you, apply at the links above. I’ve have a great first year, and I’m just getting started. Once we get the team in place, we’re going to make some noise. You will want to be a part of this.