← How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights
How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights
Navigating Local News Jobs in a Digital Age: Career Insights for Journalists
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- [00:04]
A
The army came in and said we're looking for a site to do a dirty bomb drill of a nuclear terrorist attack. Our Army Corps of Engineers came in, demolished parts of the building. They got all the theater kids from Kingston High, fake blood and tattered clothes to play casualties and dead bodies that lied amongst the wreckage. And then the army came in and did the whole bagging and tagging people, putting them through decontamination procedures.
- [00:29]
B
Welcome back to How Much Can I Make? I'm your host, Mirab. Hello Vuzeri. Today I'm joined by Zach Shaw, a 30 year veteran in journalism who works as a writer, editor and web manager for Hudson Valley One, which is a weekly paper with wide reach across the Hudson Valley. In this episode we'll find out how the rapidly changing landscape of journalism has shaped his work and what it really means to make a living in local newspaper today. So let's dive right in. Okay, so let's it do start with how did you get into journalism and what was your 30 years career at the Hudson Valley publishing like?
- [01:09]
A
Oh boy, it's been an adventure. I got into journalism because I enjoyed writing and I went to school for journalism. But in my first semester of school I saw Ulster Publishing. They had an ad for for writers. So I applied to be a writer and I wasn't a good enough writer at the time, but I lied and said I know how to do desktop publishing because I was good with computers, somehow got that job and I laid out newspapers and advertisements for quite a while and then eventually they let me start writing and I've been writing ever since.
- [01:41]
B
Did you study journalism or writing?
- [01:44]
A
I took one journalism class, but mostly I was self taught and I wrote my own zine when I was in high school about the local music scene. So definitely by the time I was writing for the paper I had written a lot and then yeah, just kept writing stuff on local culture and some news items. Writing kind of has been in everything I've done since then. Even outside of journalism. It's just something I love to do.
- [02:08]
B
People still subscribe to the print paper.
- [02:11]
A
People still subscribe and not to be macabre, they're dying out. Most of the younger people are definitely going online. So increasingly we're doing more, you know, so normally a weekly, but now we're doing daily news because there's kind of no such thing as a weekly online. I think slowly it will probably transition to a more daily operation. But yeah, when I started in 97 and around the 90s, early 2000s, local news felt like it was in its heyday, they were publishing five newspapers, big fat newspapers full of ads. And then the web came around and I helped them transition to the web. That was a lot of fun to, you know, but that was back when the web was just these basic HTML pages. And so you were kind of inventing it as you went along. And yeah, back then it was the total opposite. Very few people use the online and everyone was paper. And now Hudson Valley One publishes just one paper. And yeah, by far the greatest readership is online. There's. It's an order of magnitude bigger than the print readership.
- [03:10]
B
So actually the publishing grew because of online. Correct.
- [03:14]
A
The audience grew for sure. But the advertising revenue has shrunk because especially now in when we have social media and various other ways of getting out there for very cheap. I think a lot of businesses these days don't really feel like they need to advertise in print or online. And those that do, like, a lot of the publications that are making money right now are paid for editorial. All those glossy magazines you see, you know, the tourist pickup, a lot of Those are almost 100% ads because even the editorial was paid for by the people who they're covering.
- [03:47]
B
You edit the almanac, which is a lot about the culture. How do you decide what story to put in and what not to put in?
- [03:55]
A
It's really hard because it's a very small budget. We typically only run one or two stories. I really try and cover events that have the biggest appeal to the widest audience or are interesting and unique. And that way we can really, you know, I see part of my job is to drive heads into venues locally and constantly getting feedback. Oh, thanks for that article. You know, we had a really great turnout. That's what I'm always aiming for. So I won't cover sold out events or things that I know are already going to be popular. We try and help the community in that way. And then also for people who do events and go through the trouble of sending me a press release or reaching out to me that will often get you coverage because you're making it very easy for me to learn more about the event. And I got a great photo. So I'm surprised that more people don't send out press releases and information to editors. But if you're out there and you do events, I'd love to get more of them.
- [04:44]
B
So you make the decision alone or do you have a committee that you have to bring all your stories to the committee?
- [04:50]
A
For the most part, I make the decisions Alone. We have a weekly editorial meeting where, you know, if we're going to change the way we do things, we talk about that. But we also collect events from over 200 venues. So we have someone. We actually created a list of all the webpages that list all the events in the area. Instead of relying on people to submit their events to us, which they also do, we go out and collect them. So we have the most comprehensive event calendar. So it's really like every week I know everything that's going on, and it's pretty easy to see what cream rises to the top and what's the most interesting stuff to cover. And we do everything one week before the event. So it's kind of like geared toward people who don't know what they're going to do this weekend and they need some ideas. That's what we hope to do. Connect them with great local events.
- [05:32]
B
So you also maintain the website. What does your job exactly entail?
- [05:36]
A
Mostly hoping that it doesn't break. It's pretty solid technology these days. You know, I don't run into many problems, but yeah, every once in a while there'll be some misconfiguration or something happening that needs. So it's a lot more like, I'm the web maintenance guy. We upgrade and we do improvements here and there. The whole thing is on such a shoestring budget that there's rarely the time or resources to do a whole lot. But so I. I kind of focus on just keeping everything running and making incremental improvements as we go.
- [06:05]
B
You also write cover articles about crime, accident businesses, the kind of hard news for the area. What's the biggest challenge there?
- [06:13]
A
Those stories are by far the most popular, have the most eyeballs on them, and you're dealing with people who have died or people who allegedly commit crimes. So it's very important that you word everything very carefully, that you fact check everything two or three times and just be sensitive. You know, those are the stories that will be way more straightforward and just kind of like, here are the facts. There's no color to it. There's no writing it up fancy. It's serious business. But, you know, you try and balance sensitivity to the subject matter victims. We've written about people who have been found innocent after being accused of crimes and sort of like not a lot of newspapers will cover the person becoming innocent. So we try and follow up on that as well, so that if you don't Google that person's name, all you see is so and so accused of a crime. So far I haven't really run into any major problems or pushback with that kind of stuff, which makes me feel like I'm doing my job well. But you, you just constantly live under the fear that you're going to one fact wrong and that's going to cause a major problem because there's just so much information we're putting out on a daily basis. Our accuracy is really like 99%. You don't want to make a mistake on an article like that.
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, definitely. So you wear a lot of hats between the editor, the writer, the web, which is your favorite, by the way.
- [07:26]
A
I love covering breaking news. I love, I mean, even when it's scary, like there was a shooting three blocks away from me, no one got hurt. I felt just. I don't know. I love that feeling of breaking the news and being the first person to let everyone know here's some important information about something that actually affects you on the local level. Perversely love the complicated business stories and making them digestible to people because the most boring stuff to read and it's very complicated. And even the civics, like the way the town board, once you learn how they work and how wacky they are, it feels great to be the person that represents all the people who can't go to the board meeting because they have to work, you know, on a Tuesday night or whatever. Like I'm the person that allows them to maybe, you know, see a little bit insight of how this stuff works and maybe make a better form choice in the voting booth or just in their general lives. Typically I'll write a couple of stories a day. We try and get it up as fast as possible. That's just the way the news is. Most people don't even read the articles anymore, they just read the headlines. So I think I'm pretty good at writing headlines and that's what sets us apart because again, that's just the truth. People are reading headlines and then not clicking on, on the article so we can see it from the statistics.
- [08:36]
B
Oh, wow. Really? Because all of our attention span went to 10 seconds.
- [08:41]
A
That's why it's very disheartening every time you see it. What can you do? You try and pack as much information in the headline and you try and be first to try and be accurate. And if the story is major, like it's a murder or you know, there's a pattern of things happening, I'll usually talk to one of our writers to have them follow up on that for the weekly paper and write Something more in depth.
- [09:01]
B
Does the paper hire writers? Does it work on is on a freelance basis? How does it work?
- [09:07]
A
It used to be more staff oriented, but after Covid they went from four or five papers that they were doing to just one, you know, for cost reasons. We still have some writers that are freelance writers, probably about a dozen or so. So everyone has their kind of lane of reporting. There isn't a lot of assigning stories so much as our writers surfaced what's interesting in their town and then write about that and we kind of trust them to pick whatever is the hot button issue of the day.
- [09:35]
B
Let's say somebody like you 30 years ago is a writer, want to be a writer. What would you say would be a career path for somebody today? Getting into journalism?
- [09:46]
A
Everything that I'm doing right now is with AI and automation. And I would start there because there are going to be very few writers, editors left in the next few years that aren't using AI as a central tool, especially in news and journalism. It's not that AI is going to write the news, it's that it's such an incredibly helpful tool that allows you to essentially do more in a few years. One journalist using AI tools could probably do the work of like 10 journalists. Wow. For example, like every article needs to be edited for style. We use AP style, which is the way things are punctuated and you know, just the technical details that are. It's time consuming and tedious as an editor to have to, you know, check every punctuation mark. So just by pasting that into chat GPT, you can edit your copy without touching a single word. Just adding little technical details. That just saved me, you know, 20 minutes. Right. And I'm not going to use that 20 minutes to like eat popcorn to watch a movie. I'm going to write another article. And then automation is the other aspect where if you know how to use these web based tools to do things automatically, then for example you could just have a police reporter that's an AI bot pulling all the police blotters, searching for specific crimes, doing background, you know, checks on those people, writing up a draft of your article and then you go in and add your human element to it.
- [11:01]
B
So can somebody starting out today can actually make a living as a writer for publication?
- [11:07]
A
I hate to be a downer, but it's extraordinarily difficult unless you're chaining together a lot of different publications because most of the local papers will be okay with you doing multiple stories as long as you don't do the same story, you know, in every paper. And you could work for a big, you know, like New York Times. I'm sure those writers get paid well, but for local news, most of the people are just barely scraping by if it's the only thing they do. Like, I'd say all of us have at least one side hustle.
- [11:32]
B
So that's really like almost a dying profession, you'd say, right?
- [11:36]
A
Yeah. You know, I don't want to sound like AI is going to replace all writers. It won't. They'll still be humans writing. It just will be far smaller number and you'll need to be able to do more. Like, it's already the case that if you really want to make a living being a writer, like, you have to have domain expertise in a field such that you can, you know, write a book, you can create online, online content. You gotta have a lot more going on. I'm a musician too, and like, you can't just play music anymore. You have to have a TikTok channel and an Instagram and you have to be creating content. And I've always been the person that's like, well, you can either complain about it and do it the old way or you can learn the new way. So I think as long as you're learning the new way, you'll always have a shot at making a living and making a splash with your writing. But if you're pretending like it's 30 years ago, it's just we're in such a different landscape. I'm just astounded that Hudson Valley one still exists. I tell Getty every few years, I'm like, you're gonna be out of business in five years. And he keeps proving me wrong. So gotta respect that.
- [12:33]
B
What is your day to day like?
- [12:35]
A
So one of the things I love about working for a weekly is it's a weekly deadline cycle. I mean, I do breaking news every day. I'll look at dozens of sources to try and figure out what's going on and then I'll write about that.
- [12:47]
B
So is there one story that you worked on that stuck with you?
- [12:51]
A
The one that comes to mind is just every once in a while you get to do some crazy off the wall stuff in this job. And the Kings Inn in Kingston was being. They were planning on demolishing it. It was an old hotel called the Kings Inn on Broadway. And so it's falling apart. The army came in and said, we're looking for a site to do a dirty bomb drill of a nuclear terrorist attack. This is Perfect. Army Corps of Engineers came in, demolished parts of the building. They got all the theater kids from Kingston High, fake blood and tattered clothes to play casualties and dead bodies that lied amongst the wreckage. And then the army came in and did the whole bagging and tagging people through decontamination procedures. And we, you know, we're talking to generals, we're talking to the police chief, the fire chief. So you know, you just find yourself in the middle of this situation that you'd never be able to participate in. But really quickly. Like the best stuff is when article makes a difference. Like our writer Roko Schmoast wrote an article on one of the, where they were housing kind of the needy up here in Kingston, horrible conditions. And he exposed this and County Executive everyone went up there, cleaned it all up and like it's rare but when you can make a difference like that, even if all I do is edit that, it just feels really good. Feels like a job's more important than just read headlines on crimes and accidents.
- [14:02]
B
How do you see local journalism changes in, in the next five, ten years? Can you predict?
- [14:09]
A
I love predicting the future. I try and live with one foot in the future. I think that the trend is going to continue to be citizen journalism, individual journalism. Like I heard a comedian the other day doing a bit where he says, you know, we don't, we don't hear about the news now from cable news. We don't even hear about it from news outlets or local things. We hear about it from the person that it's happening to. Like if I saw a ship was bombed with a drone with a bunch of people on it last night and the news came from them filming the drone bombing the ship as it was happening. That was how the world found out. The video from the actual incident itself, that's the way it's going to be. And I think the role of journalists is going to be entirely to provide contact to the news that's already being delivered by the public. And that's the way it should be. I think that's a way better method of getting information to people than some super corporatized, centralized, top down approach that really is just about shaping a narrative to align with corporate interests and government interests. People holding up a camera to an actual news event that's happening in front of their faces. That's just the end all be all of news. On the other hand, AI generated content will make it increasingly more difficult to tell what's real and what's not. It's already going in that direction.
- [15:22]
B
Do you get news solicitation from citizen, from next door neighbor, from people that just saw something and send it to you?
- [15:29]
A
That hardly ever happens. I mean, occasionally you'll get, hey, there's a bear in my backyard. And people love bear in my backyard stories. But it's mostly just being posted straight to social media. And if anything, I would be reaching out to someone on social media saying, you know, can I use this then? There's also kind of an implicit understanding that if you're sharing things publicly on social media, that's the idea you want continue to amplify and share it far and wide. So 20% of the news I break comes from a social media post, whether it's by a police department or local rumor. Besides crimes and murders, people love businesses opening and closing. By far like the second most popular type of content compared to crime.
- [16:07]
B
Business opening and closing, just people go.
- [16:09]
A
Nuts if there's a new sushi restaurant or their beloved. You know, Delhi is closing. Huge traffic. Wow.
- [16:15]
B
All right. If you weren't a journalist, what do you think you would have done?
- [16:19]
A
But that's what's so great about being a journalist. I don't have to regret doing anything else because this has always ever been at most like a 20, 30 hour a week thing. Like I do probably 20 hours a week now. So I got to do all the other stuff. I got to be a musician. I get to do all my side hustles. I get to. I got lucky in getting hooked up with Ulster Publishing early when I was 17. Incredibly lucky because they are really like a family to me in all the good and bad ways. Right. A slightly dysfunctional family. I love them and I love what I do. And I'm lucky for that. Yeah.
- [16:51]
B
Awesome. All right, thank you very much. I just want to tell everybody to tune in next week. We're going to have another segment with Zach about his side hustle. An ebay store totally worth listening to if you're dreaming of side hustle.
- [17:07]
A
Sounds good.
- [17:07]
B
Thank you. Okay, that's a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website@howmuchcanimake.info we would love to hear from you. And on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.