Social media giants woo traditional journalists

par Dana Liebelson
30 oct 2018 dans Digital Journalism

Journalists laid off by cash-crunched newsrooms should be sending their resumes to social media companies — Google, Twitter and Facebook are all hiring or have recently hired editorial staff.

In the latest effort to revive 21st-century journalism, newspapers are hiring social media experts and web companies are hiring journalists.

If the trend continues, job seekers with j-school degrees may prefer applying for jobs at social networks instead of pitching stories to traditional news outlets.

A few recent examples of newsroom robbery: Google currently seeks a “creative lead writer” to help manage and communicate the search engine’s brand. The job post specifically requests a degree in journalism.

Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, is also looking for a communications manager to work in Germany. Specifically, YouTube seeks a "great communicator who can understand complex issues and explain them in person and also via well written, simple blog posts, FAQs and video scripts."

Think a journalist can’t work for a company that limits messages to 140 characters?

Think again—Twitter is trawling for an editorial director. The candidate must bring “extensive writing experience” and “editorial insights” to the Twitterverse as well as a sense of humor.

Earlier this year, Facebook hired Vadim Lavrusik, a journalist formerly with Mashable, to join the social network as the new “journalism program manager.” He was tasked with making Facebook more friendly to journalists. For example, he recently set up a Facebook guide for for journalism schools.

Lavrusik, for the record, was once a social media intern for The New York Times.