Fight Media cutbacks – think big, start small…

From small acorns grow magnificent oaks, so they say…and judging by this item today from the Guardian team, the saying may well be true for this digital media venture which I picked up. A wonderful story about battling Recession with a winning media vision.

Writer and editor Steven Watson has started to gain ground with his independent magazine online subscription service Stack, claiming that the niche indie magazine market is one which will always have a small but perfectly formed brigade of Raving Fans from which to build his fledgling media-based business. And I hope it gains positive ground in 2009.

Good to see an upbeat publishing story, amidst the recent jobs cuts, redundancies and newsroom staff slashes.

Separating Journalism and PR

Great commentary and debate here on why journalism and PR should be separated in colleges.

How creatives can survive & thrive in the Recession

Some incredibly useful and insightful tips here on how companies in creative industries can beat Recession blues, from a recent Bristol Media forum. Free downloadable PDF available through this link too. Read and absorb for your commercial peace of mind in 2009!

Great stuff from leading lights in the creative sector across the South West for our benefit. Thanks all.

Advice for budding Editors

Check out this for great hints, tips and advice. Happy Reading!

Christmas choc shocker…

Great choccie story here as we head into the festive season – Happy Christmas indeed!

Recruiting in a Recession…

Recruiting in a recession – insanity? Absolutely not!

Given that running a portfolio of magazines with a burgeoning online community, including two blog forums, daily content management inputs, as well as increasing commitments for advertising-linked copy are all making time demands somewhat unreasonable – not that it stops the fluffy PRs ringing daily and emailing of course – it is an appropriate time to recruit in some junior editorial talent.

Well, it makes sense to expand the editorial department, seeing as advertisers are screaming out for more online opportunities to promote themselves – and possibly because more and more customers are buying banner ads, online insert equivalents and sponsorship of websites.

First round interviews out of the way – down to the final three.

And the results thusfar? 38 applications, of which only 6 had the required (and requested) NCTJ qualification. A few promising magazine-trained candidates, and a few straightforward chancers.

The perennial line: “I appreciate I do not have the required NCTJ qualification, but…”

As for the news-writing exercise which formed part of the first round…well…how hard can it be? 30 minutes, 150-word News story from a PR’s bog-standard press release.

Anyway, back to the start – recruiting in a Recession.

It seems that there are alot of people out there wanting to work in the Media: maybe it is a perception of glamour and huge salaries. Maybe they imagine it is fun to deal with fluffy PRs all day. Perhaps they think it’s easy to write good copy. One of the candidates commented “my Drama degree has given me an understanding of working with words” which obviously gave me a huge amount of hope and the added propulsion required to send the application to the bin.

So – quantity does NOT guarantee quality, as we all know. And the impact of a Recession is clearly being felt, when scores of jobseekers apply for a position which is totally unsuited to their core skills and abilities.

The Feature-writing exercise will be separating the proverbial Men from the Boys – which is interesting, because the strongest final three candidates were not male. Maybe women are better-equipped than men to deal with tough economic times? The guys in our recruitment first round didn’t handle interviewing as well as the majority of their female counterparts, irrespective of newsroom experience. What are your experiences of recruiting in editorial?

Absolutely gutted…

And here’s why.

Turning bads news into good…

Great to see a number of companies utilising the ongoing economic downturn to positively utilise new business opportunities. And no, I don’t mean capitalising on the financial misery of others.

Truly entrepreneurial thinking and execution from these credit-crunched firms here.

A welcome change to be reporting some positive business News at last, having had a solid 24 weeks of company closures, redundancies and the like.

Considering Blogging? Read this!

Short, sharp and sweet today!

Although a number of the larger News organisations and magazines with online presence have their Editorial staff commenting on company blogs – and the richer we all are for it – there is much more scope for Editors out there to get into the blogosphere and share industry comments, experience and expertise.

One of the best guides to getting out there into the blogging world can be found here for my blog-uninitiated media pals. Good basic grounding and lots of handy hints and tips on promoting your online voice to be found.

Feeling insecure yet?

Well, the week that was indeed. Worrying news seen today.

We’ve seen regional editorial jobs cut by Johnston press, Newsquest and Trinity Mirror, and the forecasts are looking unlikely to improve anytime soon. It’s this pesky Recession thing, so it seems. Tough times indeed.

One thing is likely, however, and that is – according to the financial pundits in the UK and abroad – that it will worsen in the first nine months of 2009 before it improves. And even then, improvement will be slow.

That will, of course, give no comfort to the families of the journalists in the regions hit by the corporate cuts recently. Having been made a victim of the Northcliffe Group number-crunchers in London a few years ago – I recall it being called ‘economic conditions’ at the time when myself and three other hard-working, under-paid and over-delivering journalists were given summary redundancy notices – I empathise totally with the editorial staff across the three companies who have been affected in the last seven days.

At least the NUJ are involved and fighting our corner. Are your subs up-to-date?