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Share your niche in the news biz
Misery loves company. So does joy.
Whether you're struggling in your current job or fired up about it, you will do it better and feel better about it if you can connect with other journalists who face the same challenges.
You can commiserate about unreasonable editors, deceptive sources and tight newsholes. You can boast about your successes (disguising the boasting, of course, as sharing an idea with colleagues). You can ask colleagues for advice (giving them a chance to boast under the guise of sharing ideas). You can share a helpful online database you just discovered. You can pool resources to provide training to meet your common needs.
Our craft is blessed with a growing number of formal and informal networks of journalists sharing niches.
Some are long-established groups with hundreds or even thousands of members, full-time staffs, sophisticated Web sites, annual awards and regular national and regional conferences with training programs geared to the particular challenges of your niche.
Investigative Reporters and Editors, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Associated Press Managing Editors are among the best-known of these. Because they are so well known, I won't spend any time on them here, except to say I've been involved with all three and highly recommend joining if you fit in that niche.
I want to tell you, though, about some of the smaller, lesser-known and in some cases newer niche organizations. The Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors (ACRE, which sounds like it ought to be the acronym for a group of agricultural reporters, but that would be NAAJ, North American Agricultural Journalists) started in 1999. ACRE operates a listserv and will have its annual conference in November in Columbia, S.C.
I covered religion for two years and attended annual conferences of the Religion Newswriters Association. This year's conference is Sept. 10-12 in Washington. A free Religion Reporting 101 program for new reporters on the beat will precede the conference Sept. 8-9, with fellowships available to cover travel costs. Lilly Scholarships in Religion pay tuition, books and fees for journalists taking college or university courses in religion. The next application deadline is Oct. 1.
I belong to a network of trainers that is about 10 years old but has never formally organized. We have no officers or dues but we do have a listserv (http://talk.poynter.org/newscoach/ ), Web site (you're there, www.notrain-nogain.org) and annual conference, hosted for the last three years by the Poynter Institute. We share and steal ideas regularly and develop genuine friendships online before we meet face to face.
Check out the accompanying list of organizations and see if your niche is there. Follow the links and see what your colleagues have to offer.
Maybe you can't find your beat in this list. Do you cover city hall or local county government? Are you assigned to a suburban bureau, covering community news for a zoned edition of a metro newspaper? Thousands of other reporters are facing the same challenges. I can't find any evidence of networks of such reporters. Maybe you need to start one. Or tell me about one that's already taking shape and I'll tell my readers, in hopes of helping you connect with more people on your beat.
Or how about people writing about pop culture? That's a fairly new beat at some papers. If you're covering it, you may want to find other reporters blazing the same trail. Or transportation? Or growth and development?
If your niche isn't listed here and you don't know of a formal organization or informal network you can join, message me. I'll connect you with others who message me about the same topic and maybe you can start the network together.
American Association
of Sunday and Features Editors: http://www.aasfe.org/
American Copy Editors Society: http://www.copydesk.org/
Associated Press Sports Editors: http://apse.dallasnews.com/
Association of American Editorial Cartoonists: http://info.detnews.com/aaec/
Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors: http://www.capitolbeat.org/
Association of Food Journalists: http://www.afjonline.com/
Association of Health Care Journalists: http://www.ahcj.umn.edu/
Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families: http://casey.umd.edu/home.nsf
Criminal Justice Journalists: http://www.reporters.net/cjj/
Education Writers Association: http://www.ewa.org/
Football Writers Association of America: http://www.sportswriters.net/fwaa/
Foreign Correspondents Association: http://www.foreigncorrespondents.org/
Investigative Reporters and Editors: http://www.ire.org/
National Association of Science Writers: http://www.nasw.org/
National Conference of Editorial Writers: http://www.ncew.org/
National Society of Newspaper Columnists: http://www.columnists.com/
National Press Photographers Association: http://www.nppa.org/
North American Agricultural Journalists: http://naaj.tamu.edu/
Obituary Writers: http://www.obitpage.com/
Online News Association: http://www.onlinenewsassociation.org/
Organization of News Ombudsmen: http://www.newsombudsmen.org/
Regional Reporters Association: http://www.rra.org/
Religion Newswriters Association: http://www.religionwriters.com/
Society for News Design: http://www.snd.org/
Society of American Business Editors and Writers: http://www.sabew.org/
Society of American Travel Writers: http://www.satw.org/
Society of Environmental Journalists: http://www.sej.org/
U.S. Basketball Writers Association: http://www.sportswriters.net/usbwa/index.html
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