Trust #8: In a 24/7 newsroom, it's all about the basics

Veteran news editor emphasizes fairness and accuracy over speed in reporting

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Joanna Sullivan, Senior Editor, American City Business Journals

I recently interviewed Joanna Sullivan, who I hired 25 years ago to be a editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Business Journal. She’s just been promoted to senior editor on the national News & Content Team for the 45 cities in the American City Business Journals chain. [CORRECTION: I previously identified Joanna as “the” senior editor; she is actually one of four senior editors. My apologies for the error. — JB]

We took this opportunity to look at how journalism has changed, where it’s going, and where the opportunities are.

The complete 25-minute video conversation is below. For your convenience, I’ve included several 1-minute video clips that capture the essence of our conversation.

They measure everything

American City Business Journals has publications in 45 cities across the U.S. The editors and publishers get together periodically to talk tactics and strategy. I asked Joanna Sullivan what’s changed at those meetings since she started. The short answer: metrics.

When readers aren’t interested

Following up on metrics, I asked Joanna, ‘If a major investigative story doesn’t generate much traffic, what do you do about it? What kind of advice do you give the editors and writers about how to make sure that their high-quality content is reaching their audience?’

Joanna Sullivan. That's a tough one. We see that happen. We think a story is really important, and sometimes it is and maybe it's not going to get a lot of eyes, but you still have to do that story.

We look at how we presented it. Perhaps we didn't give it a good enough headline to let people know how important the story was, or maybe we wrote too long and people lost interest or didn't want to jump into it, or we didn't get to the point soon enough. So you have to kind of look at that.

We remain a niche publication, so sometimes, for example, a health care story doesn't do huge numbers. But it will do enough to satisfy the people who read us to get their health industry news.

‘Don’t compromise on trust’

I asked Joanna if the speed of news distribution today has changed how she and her team handle sensitive stories.

"When it comes to trust, we're trying not to do anything different," she said. "Just be accurate, fair, balanced in your reporting. Call people back. You know the news is fast now, but make every effort to give the person a chance to respond before you put a story up. Make sure they know what's in the story. There's no surprises."

Where have all the jobs gone?

Joanna frequently gives talks at journalism schools, such as the University of Maryland, where she got her degree. So I asked her, ‘Given all the layoffs in the news industry, and the closing of so many publications, what do you tell students in journalism school these days?’

A master’s in journalism isn’t enough

Joanna has done lots of hiring over the years. She will be involved in the national hiring strategy in her new job. What are the things that she looks for?

Joanna Sullivan. Well, of course, great internships. If you're talking to someone who is right out of college, I want to know what kind of practical experience they have.

Advanced degrees in journalism, without any work experience . . . . when I've hired people because they had a [big name] graduate school degree . . . .

The best people that I've had success with are people who were in small papers doing it every day, going to cover the fire, going to cover the school board meeting. It's harder to find those people because those staffs and those papers often don't exist anymore.

So it's been a challenge to find those kinds of journalists who have a couple of years really in the trenches. So hiring is a challenge right now. There's not a lot of people in that range of six to seven years of experience out in the market. And if they are, they're coveted, and you have to compete. And also, we're trying to retain those people as well.

X (Twitter) declines, new channels emerge

What distribution channels are you using these days? What’s changed?

The curse of ‘The Wire’

Whenever I mention that I worked in journalism in Baltimore, people always mention the popular television series ‘The Wire.’ I’ve never seen it, but Joanna has. And here are some of her thoughts.

Joanna Sullivan. Yeah, I'm tired of ‘The Wire’ references. Yes, the city has problems. Every American city seems to have a lot of problems. And I think David Simon, while he was a very good reporter and wrote some good books and did some good TV shows, it's hurt the city in many ways.

And it's not like it wasn't true. But some people just can't get away from that depiction of our city. And it's going to take a long time for the city to recover from that. And, you know, there's a lot of great things going on here. It's a great place to live. I've enjoyed living here.

A shaky business, a good public service

At the end of our interview, Joanna turned the tables and asked me what I saw ahead for the journalism profession and the industry.

What do you think about the future of trustworthy journalism? Please leave a comment below.

By the way, I have to offer my congratulations to Julia Enthoven, co-founder of Kapwing, the amazing AI-driven video service that I used to produce these 1-minute videos. You can watch a demo here, courtesy of Jeremy Caplan of Wonder Tools.

I used the free version. I uploaded my 30-minute video interview of Joanna Sullivan, and in a matter of 10 minutes, Kapwing selected nine video segments and produced extremely accurate captions. I was able to edit the transcript — adding sections that AI deleted and removing sections that it selected. I simply downloaded the video segments and then posted them on this newsletter.