We had a lecture last week by Joanna Geary, web development editor (business) of The Times, who told the story of her career so far.
A wonderful if somewhat cautionary tale for those of us at the doors of a job in newspapers. She began as many of us did, watching Lois Lane played by Teri Hatcher in Superman. After drifting away from journalism when the abyss between Lois and real life dawned, she returned after uni to a stint of work experience on the Solihull Times, then landed a job on the Birmingham Post.
But unlike some of her colleagues, who have been made redundant (and I saw on my own work experience the ghosts of busier times fill the Birmingham Post newsroom) she has been head hunted by The Times and is making it with news and tools like Nigella Lawson makes it with sugar and spoon.
Her story is great. It’s a story, it’s unusual, it’s full of random tweets between her and her next big break. She landed her current job after she was tweeted by the editor of The Times who had been tracking her ideas and online news philanthropy for a good while.
Her secret? She is journalism’s Nigella. She works it. Not by weirdly seducing copy but by being inventive and intuitive about what journalists can offer now. She began by leading the Birmingham Post into the blogosphere, having noticed that an online arts blogger was outdoing her own attempts to keep Birmingham up to date on the latest arty news.
The fact that Joanna now works for The Times and is not either working from home in her pants or not working at all is because she’s got what newspapers need and always needed. This is not expertise, it is rather a willingness to embrace the next big thing. Joanna’s success is not because she needed something, anything to survive in journalism.
She has been doing what any journalist has always done, got to grips with the best way for getting news to her audience. Today this is the news potential of social networking and the massive explosion of news-providing tools we have at our disposal. She’s just the noughties version of old school hack with his ear to the phone.
