The New England Newspaper and Press Association job page is a great resource for finding newspaper and journalism jobs throughout New England and for media companies to place job listings to recruit qualified candidates. Job listings are updated regularly and often include open positions for journalists, editors, publishers, photojournalists, newspaper and digital ad sales, and more.
NENPA members can post journalism and newspaper job openings for FREE as a member benefit. We have recently expanded this member benefit through a partnership with The Media Job Board. NENPA members can now also receive a complimentary 30-day job listing on The Media Job Board ($149 value, 1 per year) when posting a job listing on the NENPA job page.
Non-NENPA members may post job openings for $275 per listing on the NENPA job page (not eligible for a free listing on The Media Job Board).
The Media Job Board was launched as a partnership between Editor & Publisher, The Poynter Institute, and America’s Newspapers. The Media Job Board is a complete, comprehensive recruitment vertical offering the latest technology to help you find the best candidate match.
For those interested in expanding their search beyond New England. Visit our partner Mediajobboard.com, where job seekers have access to national media job search functionality, and employers have access to a large database of qualified candidates.
For more information and to submit a job posting email info@nenpa.com.
Our-Hometown announced that they will be hosting a live interview with Paul Farrell Jr. of Farrell & Fuller, LLC and Bob Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC, two of the legal professionals leading the anti-trust lawsuit against Google and Facebook on behalf of newspapers across the country.
News publishers are invited to join this free live interview on February 24th at 12:00 pm EST.
Attendees will receive an update on the ongoing efforts against the powerful duopoly of Google & Facebook. At the conclusion of the interview, publishers in attendance will have the opportunity to ask questions about the case and what it means for the future of digital advertising.
In case you missed it, the lawsuit is centered around allegations that Google and Facebook have monopolized the digital advertising market and conspired to manipulate online ad auctions under an agreement known as “Jedi Blue.”
“The freedom of the press is not at stake,” the suit says. “The press itself is at stake.” A free and diverse press is essential to a vibrant democracy. That is being threatened by Google and Facebook’s unlawful conduct, as alleged in the complaint.
An Editor and Publisher article published last January sheds some more light on the complaint.
The outcome of this lawsuit could be incredibly important to the future of newspapers. We hope you’ll take the opportunity to attend this interview to learn a little more about what is at stake and show your support.
This column expresses the views of Gene Policinski, senior fellow for the First Amendment, Freedom Forum.He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.
The nation’s founders didn’t have access to today’s social media – but what if they had?
Of course, they took good advantage of the media that they did have, from letters to printed newspapers and journals. They spoke loudly to their fellow citizens, using crowds on the village green instead of speaking through the “village screen” now available worldwide.
Not everything was different. They faced what we might call “colonial terms of service,” rules like those imposed today by social media platforms that govern what can be said and how we can say it. For example, you could not say anything bad about the king, whether it was true or false.
One big difference: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and others faced government regulations and sanctions for what they said or wrote through any medium because the First Amendment was not ratified until 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
Today we agree to terms of service rules to use social media platforms, an agreement outside the First Amendment’s free speech protection. Social media companies are private entities and have their own rights under the First Amendment, which prevents – for now, at least – government control or censorship over content on their sites.
There’s no imagination needed in some cases to take the work of the Founders right into today’s social media structure. Patrick Henry’s 1775 declaration “Give me liberty or give me death” works as effectively today as a tweet as it did nearly 250 years ago in rousing Virginians to send troops to support the American revolution.
Consider the impact in any medium of the Declaration of Independence’s statement that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Of course, in today’s post, that same phrase might look like this: “👨 and 👩are =, endowed with the right to 🧬,🗽and the pursuit of 😊.”
There’s great debate today across the political spectrum on whether the government should step in to regulate social media. Some would block platforms from banning anyone or provide special protections for political candidates or elected officeholders. Others would mandate increased efforts to combat misinformation or make social media companies financially liable for any harm caused by what others post.
If such rules and regulations were in effect for the Founders, would Twitter have blocked – perhaps only temporarily – two future presidents for the bitter exchanges between the campaigns of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson during the 1796 presidential election?
One report has it that Adams was labeled “a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant,” while others called him “a syphilitic, royalist bastard.” Jefferson was called “a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward,” with some critics describing him as a “half-breed.” One account says that “even Martha Washington succumbed … telling a clergyman that Jefferson was ‘one of the most detestable of mankind.”
While Twitter’s terms of service do provide wide scope for personal comments, Adams or Jefferson today might have filed a complaint about “long-term harassment,” something the social media giant says might trigger a ban on future posts.
They also could sue for defamation, but the courts generally consider even the most spiteful or vulgar opinion — particularly when it’s political speech — to be protected by the First Amendment.
TAKING “ONLINE” THREATS OFFLINE
A less-judicious way — and illegal in most states, even then — of settling such “online” disputes would be how Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton settled their personal attacks: pistols at dawn. But let’s remember how badly that option turned out: Hamilton was mortally wounded in the duel and Burr’s reputation was damaged beyond repair.
And what of Jefferson’s words in a letter endorsing the American revolution: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”? As a tweet today, perhaps around the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, would that call to action run afoul of Silicon Valley rules – and perhaps lead to an FBI knock on a Monticello door? Such a phrase, depending on the context, could be judged a “true threat” and not protected speech.
The First Amendment provides us with great protection from government interference for what we say and write, particularly on political issues or matters of public interest. As we deal with the societal impact of social media — still a relatively new way of speaking — we should remember that the nation’s founders created those protections to allow for what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “robust and vigorous” debate. In 2002, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”
We ought to think about those words – and why the Founders and the nation ratified the First Amendment’s five freedoms during a period of great division and debate not unlike today – in considering how and if to further regulate social media and other means of communication.
As Benjamin Franklin said (and would no doubt have posted): “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Many newsrooms have tackled urgent social issues with majority white staff—some more successfully than others. The National Press Foundation intends to do its part to address this problem through a “Widening the Pipeline” Fellowship designed to help confront the common lament that “it’s hard to find qualified journalists of color.”
This is an all-expenses-paid fellowship, from March 2022 to February 2023. Apply by Feb. 6, 2022.
Beginning in March 2022, the once-monthly training sessions will include two in-person gatherings in Washington, D.C. (unless COVID-19 guidelines mandate that all sessions be virtual). Participants must be fully vaccinated to attend the in-person training. NPF will pay for fellows’ airfare, hotel, and most meals for the two in-person training’s. The estimated time commitment for virtual training, including prep and homework, is five hours per month.
The 2022 program will build on NPF’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting and Accountability fellowships, existing partnerships, influential alumni and volunteers to support the growth of these public service-minded reporters. The application is here.
NPF is committed to leveraging its resources and decades of training experience to help grow the pipeline of diverse journalists who will rise to positions of influence in America’s newsrooms.
Specifically, NPF will:
Recruit up to 25 young journalists for a 12-month fellowship in the leadership, in-depth reporting, data, and multimedia skills they need to hold governments and corporations accountable and to advance in their newsrooms.
Provide each fellow with individual coaching and mentoring.
Bring fellows to Washington for training, mentoring, and networking sessions with editors.
Survey fellows on promotion, retention, and job satisfaction.
John Foust has conducted training programs for thousands of newspaper advertising professionals. Many ad departments are using his training videos to save time and get quick results from in-house training. E-mail for information: john@johnfoust.com.
Samuel, the ad manager at a community paper, told me about a simple technique his sales team uses at the end of meetings with prospects and clients.
“I once read that people remember only about 25 percent of what they hear,” he said. “That’s a harsh reality because we focus our client conversations on things we think are memorable. It’s painful to walk away from a meeting knowing that the person on the other side of the desk might forget three-quarters of the discussion. Of course, we use ad examples, charts, and coverage maps to add visual elements to presentations, but they still forget a large percentage of what we talk about.
“We’ve learned that one way to deal with this problem is to summarize at the end of a meeting,” he said. “It’s an easy way to repeat the important points in a conversation. And a lot of times, we find out the other person has completely missed a key fact. A summary helps us clarify things and make presentations a little easier to remember.”
Samuel’s process has three steps:
Restate briefly. For example, a member of Samuel’s team might say,“Thank you for meeting with me today. To make sure we’re on the same page, let me recap what we’ve talked about. First, we looked at the target audience for your new Widget product, then you gave me a list of the most important features and benefits, then we talked about some special offers that could appeal to your customers.”
Notice how this brief statement hits the highlights in a logical sequence. There’s no need to go into great depth about everything which was discussed.
Confirm the information and ask for input. After the summary, it helps to nail it down by asking, “Does this cover everything?”
Even though it’s short, this is a crucial question. It is designed to give the other person permission to say they missed something which was covered – or even to say they would like to know something else. If something has been misunderstood, it’s better to find out now.
Include an action item. For instance, “My next step is to start on that market report you want and get it to you by Monday. Will that work?”
This is the time to get some kind of agreement and advance the sale. If the other person is not yet ready to finalize things and sign on the dotted line, this keeps the dialogue going in a helpful, low-key way.
“An action step can make a conversation stick in the mind,” Samuel explained. “It gives the salesperson a specific reason to get back in touch. It lets the other person know to expect a call by a certain day. When someone is waiting for information, an action step reduces the chances that an email or a voice mail message will be ignored.”
It’s all about creating memorable presentations. When advertisers and prospects remember the key points, they are more likely to buy.
(c) Copyright 2022 by John Foust. All rights reserved.
Annually, the Society of Professional Journalists presents the Mark of Excellence Awards, honoring the best in student journalism.
Entries are first judged on the regional level. First-place regional winners advance to the national competition, and most are recognized at their respective regional SPJ conference in 2022. National winners will be showcased on spj.org.
A best in show (MOEy) award will be given for the overall best entry among all national winners. The winner will be honored at the SDX Awards dinner.
Winners in the following categories are eligible for a MOEy only if they cover a single topic:
Three people from New England are included in Editor & Publisher’s exclusive story, 25 under 35, that recognizes the next generation of news publishing leaders.
All 25 young professionals have used the difficult times to innovate, perform and stand out from their peers.
The people recognized from New England are:
Erika Hale Smith, 32
Vice President, Events and Sponsorships, Boston Globe Media
Taylor Blatchford, Founder and Editor, of The Lead, is looking for students and recent graduates to guest write for The Lead. No one knows student journalism better than student journalists, and she wants to hear how you’ve solved problems, innovated, or tackled complex subjects at your student publication.
All students will be paid for their writing, thanks to The Lead’s partnership with Poynter. Blatchford is especially interested right now in pitches on these topics:
Publishing across platforms
Photo + video journalism
The most successful pitches are specific and concise. Think about lessons other student journalists can learn from your personal experience, and show your understanding of The Lead’s purpose and audience. There’s no deadline, but the sooner you pitch, the better.
We are excited to announce the New England Newspaper Convention will be held live in Boston April 29 – 30, 2022.
We’re planning two days filled with workshops, training sessions, seminars, and panels that address the latest developments, opportunities, and obstacles that our members are confronting. Topics will cover all areas of publishing including news, advertising, digital, marketing, promotion, circulation, operations, and new technology.
Please let us know if there are topics you think are important to the industry that we should include by emailing us at: info@nenpa.com.
In addition to learning and networking, we’re looking forward to celebrating together! We will recognize the extraordinary work produced in New England when we announce the winners of the New England Better Newspaper Competition.
We’re also excited to honor those who have dedicated their lives and careers to journalism. This year we’ll celebrate the newest members of the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame, and the Academy of New England Journalists will present the Yankee Quill awards.
The New England Newspaper and Press Association job page is a great resource for finding newspaper and journalism jobs throughout New England and for media companies to place job listings to recruit qualified candidates. Job listings are updated regularly and often include open positions for journalists, editors, publishers, photojournalists, newspaper and digital ad sales, and more.
Many newsrooms have tackled urgent social issues with majority white staff—some more successfully than others. The 
Fist Five Perspective: What if the nation’s founders had been able to tweet?
The nation’s founders didn’t have access to today’s social media – but what if they had?
Of course, they took good advantage of the media that they did have, from letters to printed newspapers and journals. They spoke loudly to their fellow citizens, using crowds on the village green instead of speaking through the “village screen” now available worldwide.
Not everything was different. They faced what we might call “colonial terms of service,” rules like those imposed today by social media platforms that govern what can be said and how we can say it. For example, you could not say anything bad about the king, whether it was true or false.
One big difference: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and others faced government regulations and sanctions for what they said or wrote through any medium because the First Amendment was not ratified until 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
Today we agree to terms of service rules to use social media platforms, an agreement outside the First Amendment’s free speech protection. Social media companies are private entities and have their own rights under the First Amendment, which prevents – for now, at least – government control or censorship over content on their sites.
There’s no imagination needed in some cases to take the work of the Founders right into today’s social media structure. Patrick Henry’s 1775 declaration “Give me liberty or give me death” works as effectively today as a tweet as it did nearly 250 years ago in rousing Virginians to send troops to support the American revolution.
Consider the impact in any medium of the Declaration of Independence’s statement that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Of course, in today’s post, that same phrase might look like this: “👨 and 👩are =, endowed with the right to 🧬,🗽and the pursuit of 😊.”
There’s great debate today across the political spectrum on whether the government should step in to regulate social media. Some would block platforms from banning anyone or provide special protections for political candidates or elected officeholders. Others would mandate increased efforts to combat misinformation or make social media companies financially liable for any harm caused by what others post.
If such rules and regulations were in effect for the Founders, would Twitter have blocked – perhaps only temporarily – two future presidents for the bitter exchanges between the campaigns of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson during the 1796 presidential election?
One report has it that Adams was labeled “a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant,” while others called him “a syphilitic, royalist bastard.” Jefferson was called “a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward,” with some critics describing him as a “half-breed.” One account says that “even Martha Washington succumbed … telling a clergyman that Jefferson was ‘one of the most detestable of mankind.”
While Twitter’s terms of service do provide wide scope for personal comments, Adams or Jefferson today might have filed a complaint about “long-term harassment,” something the social media giant says might trigger a ban on future posts.
They also could sue for defamation, but the courts generally consider even the most spiteful or vulgar opinion — particularly when it’s political speech — to be protected by the First Amendment.
TAKING “ONLINE” THREATS OFFLINE
A less-judicious way — and illegal in most states, even then — of settling such “online” disputes would be how Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton settled their personal attacks: pistols at dawn. But let’s remember how badly that option turned out: Hamilton was mortally wounded in the duel and Burr’s reputation was damaged beyond repair.
And what of Jefferson’s words in a letter endorsing the American revolution: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”? As a tweet today, perhaps around the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, would that call to action run afoul of Silicon Valley rules – and perhaps lead to an FBI knock on a Monticello door? Such a phrase, depending on the context, could be judged a “true threat” and not protected speech.
The First Amendment provides us with great protection from government interference for what we say and write, particularly on political issues or matters of public interest. As we deal with the societal impact of social media — still a relatively new way of speaking — we should remember that the nation’s founders created those protections to allow for what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “robust and vigorous” debate. In 2002, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”
We ought to think about those words – and why the Founders and the nation ratified the First Amendment’s five freedoms during a period of great division and debate not unlike today – in considering how and if to further regulate social media and other means of communication.
As Benjamin Franklin said (and would no doubt have posted): “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”