Not Enough Good Men

Time was when the term journalist applied almost exclusively to the man who earned a living by writing for a newspaper or a magazine. Today the aspiring journalist can look in an ever-widening variety of directions. Radio, television, public relations and even government stand in need of his services, and bid spiritedly against the U.S. press for the newcomer. One reason the bidding is so lively is that there are no longer enough good men to go around.

The manpower shortage is relatively mild in the metropolitan press, but among the nation's small-city dailies, it is nothing short of critical. Traditionally, the little daily got first crack at the fledgling newsman, who found it difficult to start anywhere but at the bottom, and who knew, besides, that he could learn the ropes faster there. Now, however, the new man with any promise at all can bypass a humble apprenticeship. He does not have to start at the bottom--and seldom does.

Two for One. Last year the nation's journalism schools--a standard reservoir of raw material--turned out only 2,900 diplomas. Nearly all the graduates could sort through a fistful of job offers, many from industry--where the salaries were generally more alluring than journalism's $92. As a result, fewer than half the graduates chose newspapering. And almost none picked up the lower starting salaries offered by most small daily newspapers.

Desperate need has inspired some desperation tactics. The Gainesville, Ga., Times, a daily of 9,258 circulation, pays two $60 wages to get one man. Each year the Times hires a brace of undergraduates from the University of Georgia in Athens, 35 miles southeast, lets one stay in school while the other works at the paper fulltime. When a semester ends, the two novitiates trade places. In Arkansas, the Texarkana morning Gazette and evening News have tried another tack: hiring women. Today, every other editorial staffer on these jointly owned papers wears a skirt. The Portsmouth, N.H., Herald once body-snatched on a transatlantic scale by placing help-wanted ads in the British press. From 140 replies, the Herald got three new hands. But all moved on within a year.

No System. Where small dailies have teamed together in recruitment programs, they have sometimes achieved modest success. In three years, the Indiana Newspaper Personnel Committee, which invites college and university students in for summertime newspaper jobs, is already paying annual dividends; last June the committee hired 15 graduates as newsroom help. But sometimes such efforts run into apathy. This fall in Wisconsin, when the Appleton Post-Crescent's John Torinus appealed to 35 papers for help in starting a training plan, he got only seven replies.

Many small dailies seem disposed to accept their starvation diet as if it were an ineluctable fact of newspaper life. Says John Murphy, executive director of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association: "The shortage of editorial help is our own fault. We ought to have a better clearing house of information, and closer contacts with the schools. We don't really have any system."

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