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Remember the days when you dreaded posting a reporter or anchor opening? Those old U.S. Post Office plastic crates full of tapes that would engulf your office? Narrowing it down to the best 10 or 15 candidates would take hours. If you would have described the hiring reality that we face in 2024 to me back then, I never would have believed it.
Two issues have come to a head at once in the current recruiting challenges. Unless it is a sports job, there are very few qualified candidates. In many small markets, forget qualified. It’s not uncommon to have zero applicants at all. Second, the people who are applying for traditional starter jobs are not prepared. They often lack basic storytelling skills, know-how on getting basic story information and ethics and legal guidelines. Don’t even get me started on the writing.
What I hear from many small market (and increasingly middle market) news directors and see in watching their products is it’s just plain bad. At a growing number of stations, it’s rare to see any story from a reporter with more than a year or two under his or her belt. Many of these newscasts are simply hard to watch.
Local news leadership has been complaining about this trend for years, but it has reached a point of critical mass. There has been a lack of producers for almost 15 or 20 years, but now the problem is