The importance of hiring talent

Newspapers have been working hard to figure out video and I thought I understood it, but once I started hiring the right people it really helped formalize my beliefs about the importance of good talent. In 2005, I hired my first television-trained journalist and she made our videos better, but she was also scorned at times by those who didn't believe newspaper-based websites should be doing video like TV -- I agree with that. However, the delivery and execution of someone trained for TV certainly helps polish packages and there's no reason that you can't have the best of both worlds -- great video and great journalism.

Here was one of Juliane Ngan's video packages when she was working with me at The Press-Enterprise.




Later I hired a young reporter from a Palm Springs TV station named Chris Ercoli, where he was a breaking news reporter. While he wanted to focus on sports, he continued to show great promise as a breaking news reporter, who could also write. At one point we teamed Ercoli and writer Will Holden, who would later do some important things online and on TV, for a late-night show around high school football. Here's a sample of their collaboration:

My last hire in Riverside was Pep Fernandez, a longtime sports anchor in Bakersfield. Fernandez immediately improved the overall production our live video programming and was instrumental in improving the brand of HS GameTime -- the Press-Enterprise's high school sports vertical. Here's a sample of Pep's work:


When I got to Bakersfield, I hired a number of people with broadcast experience to help improve our video efforts. They were Chris McCullah, Lisa Krch, Lisa Kimble, Vance Palm, Charmaine Cleveland and John Farrand. All made important contributions to our video efforts at The Bakersfield Californian.