personal news – Ryan Sholin

I’m starting a new job today as an Enterprise Growth Engineer on the WordPress VIP team at Automattic.

I’m a little bit excited.

If you know me at all, you know that no matter the title, my job in news has always been to evangelize for new technology to serve journalism. As a reporter, an editor, a product manager, a team leader — I’ve tried to give journalists the tools and training they need to successfully reach (and move! and impact!) their readers, while growing their audience and building sustainable models for the future.

WordPress has often been a part of that equation for me. I suppose my first of many CMS migrations was the move of my own blog to WordPress from Blogspot, even if it was only a few weeks after I started writing here. Later came a WordPress theme for the blogs at what was then Inside Bay Area (in the 19th iteration since, it’s currently the East Bay Times but has somehow maintained the stories I wrote as an intern in 2006), then a move of all the Santa Cruz Sentinel’s blogs from pMachine (an early Expression Engine product IIRC) to WordPress, plus a couple Joomla (and Mambo?) verticals, too. I used WordPress as a platform for podcasting, for daily video newscasts, for blogs, naturally, and even once drafted plans for a university journalism department website, among other non-news odds and ends.

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When I left corporate media for the nonprofit news world in 2015, it felt like I was starting a tour of duty. I had heard the same phrase used by people taking government tech work at places like 18F, and it fit the way I felt at the time. Would I stay in the nonprofit world for good? What would I learn, and how would I use it in the future? Would I look for another nonprofit role when the first one ran its course?

In the end, this move is personal. I decided to look for a role at an organization that was remote-first. I wanted to try something new, outside my usual routine of journalism product management (although you should totally keep doing that, please), and I wanted to be in a position where I could focus on The Work for a while, rather than The Work About The Work, although it will always interest me, too.

So. If you hate your CMS, hit me up. And. AND! If you lovvvvvve your CMS, I want to hear all about that, too.

Oh, and, of course, Automattic is hiring.

Seriously, when did we start calling new job news “personal news” and why? It’s professional news. It’s just me, getting a new job. Personal news is “we adopted a dog” (we did!) or “we’re having another kid” (we’re not!) or maybe “we’re moving to New York” (also not happening!).

But other things *are* happening.

Personal News
I am excited to tell you that I have a new job starting next week.

I’m joining Chalkbeat to lead product and growth. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization that’s reimagining local news with a focus on issues of inequity in education. I’m grateful to be stepping into an amazing team in four cities, and I’m eager to help them grow and continue to build a sustainable model for nonprofit education news.

In years past, I’ve said young people don’t care about local news until they buy a house and send their kids to public schools. Guess what? I care about local news these days! And I’m a two-issue local news consumer: 1) Full-day kindergarten, and 2) are we ever going to build the stadium for that NASL team we were promised? The first issue is more important. And it’s tied to issues of managing housing development in Loudoun County a little more consistently. This might be a first world educational issue in my corner of the county, for now, but I’m an engaged local news consumer.

When the opportunity came up to get involved with an organization dedicated to covering high-poverty schools across the country, I jumped at it.

Onward.

I’m grateful to everyone at Gannett for the opportunities I’ve had there over the past five years. It’s been a privilege to work with local journalists and technologists on the biggest challenges facing the news business. My mission in journalism has always been to make a difference at scale, and Gannett was the perfect place to do so.

But now it’s time to move on, and I can’t wait for everything that comes next.

Any questions? I’ll start.

Q: Chartbeat? Cool, real-time analytics are totally addictive!
A: They sure are. Love that stuff. Not working for them, though. It’s Chalkbeat, like the chalkboard beat, like education news. If there’s one thing I know about education, it’s that repetition can be important. Chalkbeat. Education news. In context. Chalkbeat. Dot-Org.

Q: It looks like Chalkbeat is in New York. Are you moving to New York?
A: Chalkbeat’s leadership team is in New York, but there are also teams covering the Denver area, Indianapolis, and Memphis, too. It’s a distributed organization, like many nonprofits and startup news orgs these days, and I’m not moving anywhere. Ask me about my new home office, and the standing desk I’ve been building. And the walls I’ve been painting. And the bed and dresser I have up for sale on Craigslist. Please, ask me about the furniture. Bring a truck to ask me about it.

Q: So… [whispers] …are you hiring?
A: SO GLAD YOU ASKED! As a matter of fact, Chalkbeat is hiring a Full-Stack Engineer. This person will work directly with me on product development. WordPress is the core of the proverbial technology stack right now, but there’s amazing work to be done on measuring impact (read about Chalkbeat’s MORI here), as well as other big ideas around audience analytics. We’re going to be supercharging Chalkbeat’s already strong remote culture with inspiration from Vox Product, 18F, Fusion, and others, so although New York or DC-based candidates would be cool, remote would work for the right candidate, too. You should ask me more about this role. You’re probably right for it. Yes, you.

Q: What can I say, I’m inspired! How can I help?
A: First of all, if you have kids or family who teach in New York, Denver, Indianapolis, or Memphis, head directly to your local Chalkbeat and start reading today. Subscribe to an email newsletter. Follow Chalkbeat on Twitter. Like Chalkbeat on Facebook. You can do all of these things.

But also, you can make a donation today to support one of the few nonprofit news organizations in this space doing local reporting on some of the most critical issues facing schools in America’s poorest communities. Want to help tell this story? Help fund the important work they’re doing today.

Q: We know you’ve been listening to Hamilton a lot lately. Does this have anything to do with Hamilton?
A: I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, you forget yourself.

Q: Is there one more thing?
A: You know there is. It’s about finding a new job you love. You don’t find a job by obsessively refreshing LinkedIn, or Glassdoor, or searching Idealist and Media Bistro and Journalism Jobs multiple times a day. Nope. Doesn’t work. Good luck!

You find your new job on Twitter. Seriously. I should know better than to use any other method, but I first heard about this job listing in a tweet during ONA. I wasn’t even at ONA. I guess I was following the hashtag in Tweetdeck and happened to look up at the screen? Maybe? Or someone retweeted this. This:

Thanks, Twitter. Thanks, Sarah!

Tag: personal news

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