Kovacevic: Now hiring a full-time reporter! (And why hiring's so hard!)

We're hiring a full-time reporter. We're offering pay that's among our industry's peak. We're offering vacation time, benefits and, of course, the credentialing and travel budget that'd put the individual in the best possible position to excel. And, to accentuate how seriously we're taking this, we're not accepting applications from anyone who lacks big-league experience.

Believe it or not, even amid all that, it'll be very, very hard to find a fit.

The main reason: Very few younger people are doing this the way we need it to be done. Almost all of our applicants in recent years have been college students or recent graduates and, without fail, they all feel they're ready to do this just because they're capable of live-tweeting through an event. As if that's more than 1% of the job anywhere. (It's 0% here.) If not that, they're writing for a blog or a blog network, sharing fan-view opinions about their favorite teams, which is the last thing we'd want. And if not either of those, they're writing miniature four-paragraph articles for clickbait companies on certain subjects and claiming that they're "covering the Steelers."

I'm not kidding. Just a couple weeks ago, a young-ish person swore to me up, down and sideways that he's been "covering the Steelers for five years." And when I mentioned that I've been doing that since 1997 here and hadn't once seen him, he casually replied, "No, I'm in Philadelphia." As if I was the dummy who didn't get it.

Lots of stuff's changed about journalism, to say the least. What hasn't is that reporters still need to learn and practice real journalism before pretending they can do jobs like this.

Our Jose Negron, for example, came to us from the Mon Valley Independent, a longstanding newspaper in our region. And he did a little of everything there, from reporting to writing to editing to arranging pages and entire sections ... and go ahead and ask him how much of that he's already put into play. He'll need almost all of those skills, in some form, to produce the content he's got coming from San Francisco this morning. Which, not coincidentally, is why he was among the easiest interviews/hires we've ever had.

I put this out on social media last night ...

... and suffice it say I'm still waiting for the first to come close to those criteria.

I don't want to make this sound like the hardest job in the world to study and master. It isn't. One doesn't need a dozen years of education, like in law, medicine or whatever. Heck, I never even finished at Duquesne, so maybe one doesn't need education at all.

But it's also not as bleeping easy as way too many seem to think, increasingly, with each passing year. And to be blunt, it's killing us when it comes to a hiring pool to the extreme that Dali and I already wonder how much further into the future we'll be able to keep up the writing portion of the operation. (Nothing imminent, of course. I'm talking, like, 5-10 years from now.)

There are other factors, too: We're almost 10 years old, not 200-plus like some newspapers, so we're still seen as a new, uncertain entity. (Even though we're profitable, and they're bleeding, oh, say, $30 million a year.) We're also not a massive operation, as we're focused fully on our Pittsburgh teams and not news, weather, obits, whatever, but that can scare some. And ugliest of all, we've been used several times by people looking for newspaper jobs, where we make an offer, only for them to take that offer to a newspaper and ask to have it matched.

Ugh.

But the predominant factor's what I wrote above: Candidates are scarce because the art of professional reporting/writing has hit a hard fade.

So, we're trying. And we'll keep trying.

Can't promise. Can't resurrect a profession.

TO BE CLEARER ...

Grafting onto this, we aren't anyone's farm system or start-up or -- and I really hate this one -- training academy. In addition to the fact that I've got no time to be teaching the profession, that's never been an aim here, and it'll never be that. All we've ever wanted is to hire the best fit for the job. There've been times where they've been older, times when they've been younger, times when they've had experience, times when they came here straight from pizza delivery. The only pattern was -- and is -- searching for a fit.

One thing that really makes me cringe is when a reader will share, however well-intentioned, praise for building up someone and then seeing them move on to somewhere else. That's not the purpose of the hiring. That's not the purpose of the ongoing employment. We're just looking for the best fit for as long as it's still the best fit.

That's why I've never stopped chasing Chris Halicke all over creation, to put forth Exhibit A. He felt he had to turn in a resignation a year ago because he needed to get back with his family and young children in Texas. I still found a way to keep him busy and within our structure from afar. And now, a year later, we've worked out an arrangement where he's coming back to our area, family included.

He's committed to us, and we're committed to him. He's loyal to us, and we're loyal to him. He's done great work for us, and we've found a fair way to reward him.

THAT'S the goal. 

We're not messing around here, my friends. That's about to become a lot clearer in the weeks, even the days, to come.

INSIDE THE WORKS

• If I sound like someone who could use a break, yeah, I could. And I'll take one in mid-June, flying back to Serbia for time with the ancestral family for a week. Super-stoked for it, too.

• Our BoomPress developers are expecting to issue a formal app update in the coming week. I've been so busy I don't even know what's part of this one, but just know that this'll be one of those that requires replacing the app off the App Store or Google Play. All I'm hoping is that it restores our refreshing mechanisms. Fingers crossed.

• Our 10th anniversary celebration will be July 23 at the HQ/shop. We've already heard from quite a few of you planning to attend, including some from well out of town. For anyone looking into a longer trip, know that the Pirates and Cardinals have a three-game series at PNC Park at that time, so it's a nice double-dip.

• If you're a Facebook type, come join our DKPS Lunatics group on there. Zero cost. It's for discussion, but it's also an alternative way to keep apprised of new material here.

• Everyone loving being ad-free? If you're not there yet, it's only for paying subscribers. If you aren't subscribed yet or if your subscription's expired: this is our new subscribe page. Make sure you're logged in, tap on the link, and thumb down to the bottom for the SUBSCRIBE button to buy/renew at the monthly or annual level. We also have discounts, as ever, for student subscriptions and senior subscriptions.

• Grateful that so many of you continue to leave us good reviews on outside platforms. There've been hundreds of reviews already. For anyone who hasn't yet, feel free to add your own on our Google listing, our Apple or Spotify podcast channels, our YouTube channels for the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates and, last but definitely not least, our own app, whether it's the Apple or Android version. And again, thank you!

BACK TO BUSINESS

• Our page-view numbers for the past week were 1,112,710, with 50,818 unique users over the most recent full seven-day span, April 20-26. Our most-read original piece was pretty much a tie between my column previewing the Steelers' draft, at 20,929, and my column calling the Pirates' offense 'embarrassing,' at 20,804.

• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 91,451, plus another figure we (still) can't access yet on a second platform, and our YouTube video views for the past week were 139,812.

• Our company social media accounts are at 53,439 followers on X, 40,515 on Facebook, 30,897 on YouTube, 14,954 on Instagram ... and already 4,368 on the new Threads!

• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com

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• Thanks for reading and, as ever, for your support of this venture.