Get the Inside Scoop on Potential Employers

By: Randy Dotinga Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of newsrooms? Poisonkitchen.com knows.

The "Rant Board" on the tell-it-all Web site allows insiders to anonymously compare notes about what it's like to work at dozens of newspapers. If you're curious about which publishers offer lousy benefits and which editors drive their reporters nuts, this is the place to go.

But even poisonkitchen.com's creator, an Olympia, Wash., copy editor named Andrew Lyons, admits that readers should take the postings with the proverbial grains of salt. They should indeed, and they should rely on more than one source for the skinny on newspapers where they may apply.

Here are the best ways to learn about pay, morale, the best and worst bosses, and other important details missing from the classified listings for newspaper jobs:

** START WITH THE WEB. It doesn't matter if you're applying for a job in advertising or the pressroom. Put on your reporter's cap and hit Google. "You have to be an investigator," said Pam Johnson, a leadership and management instructor with the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Poke around in the E&P Online archives too, and consider joining one of the many list-servs that serve journalists. Chances are nobody will mind if you send out a query asking whether anybody knows about your target newspaper.

The Internet will help you learn answers to big questions. Is the newspaper growing or shrinking? Has it had recent layoffs? Have the top bosses been around for a while or is there a revolving door in the executive offices?

And, yes, drop by poisonkitchen.com, an online bulletin board named for the nickname that the Nazis gave to a crusading Munich newspaper. (The Nazis eventually shut the paper down.)

Poisonkitchen.com is much smaller than its cousin, Newsmait.com, which collected so many diatribes against editors in the late 1990s that its creator finally collapsed in the sea of venom and gave up. Lyons said his site isn't quite so rant-happy.

Still, "I often get a dialogue between people who work at a newspaper as a way to vent their frustrations about the office," he said. "You can get a very good picture about what's going on by reading those."

** CHECK WITH THE UNION, if there is one. And remember that even "non-union" newspapers may have union representation in individual departments, like the pressroom.

Employee contracts are public documents, and a quick call or visit to the right Web site will provide you with salary information, said Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, which represents some 34,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada.

Unions can also tell you other relevant details. For instance, applicants for classified department jobs can find out if the bosses will monitor their work calls.

** USE YOUR CONNECTIONS. This works no matter how long you've been in the business, as recent University of Maryland journalism graduate Chris Frates discovered. He spent plenty of time checking out prospects by looking for the fewest degrees of separation between him and reporters at the target newspapers.

"You make calls to people you know and ask who's a good guy or good gal to talk to. Chances are they aren't some total slouch or slacker," he said. "Then you call and ask, 'What's up and what's the lay of the land?' Generally reporters are pretty honest about the situation."

The staff members at one newspaper told him they had a new editor and were looking at the future with lots of hope and a bit of fear. Frates now works as a reporter at that paper -- The Denver Post.

** START YOUR INVESTIGATION EARLY. Some newspapers encourage applicants to meet with other employees over lunch or coffee during the interview process. That's nice, but you'll probably be too nervous -- or too focused on making the right impression -- to ask probing questions.

** DON'T WORRY ABOUT BEING EXPOSED. Well, at least don't worry too much about it. In an ideal world, your potential boss won't care that you've been sniffing around.

"If I were hiring someone inside a newsroom and found out they were talking to as many people as they could, I'd think they were doing their legwork," said Johnson, the Poynter instructor and former editor of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix.

And if your potential boss is turned off by your digging? Well, you can always tell poisonkitchen.com all about it.