On June 1, I will be stepping down as volunteer executive director of the Pelham Examiner. I’m writing to invite anyone with the interest and experience to apply for what will become a paid part-time role.

We use the nonprofit organizational title of “executive director” here, but in reality this person is and will be a teacher, mentor, advisor, copyeditor, rewrite person, occasional reporter and publisher of the newspaper. The executive director reviews everything that’s published and is solely responsible for posting press releases, obituaries and letters to the editor, including the formatting, photo editing and headline writing.

Requirements for the position:

• Journalism experience, preferably with some time spent covering the local news beat.
• Some copyediting work and familiarity with Associated Press and general newspaper style for news stories and headlines.
• Knowledge of how local government works, including school, village and town boards, land-use regulation and state laws as they apply to school districts. Some familiarity with covering local nonprofits, community organizations and businesses helpful.
• Experience using Word Press or some other content management system for publishing online. Expert level is not required, but the willingness to learn is important.
• Experience with Mail Chimp or the willingness to learn. (Mail Chimp distributes our daily email newsletter.)

The executive director will work approximately 20 hours a week and can set their own schedule. We are looking to hire to start in April or early May so the new person can work with me to learn how the Pelham Examiner operates.

One additional requirement: Creativity. One might also call it entrepreneurship. Or flexible problem solving. The staff of this paper will always be time pressed. They will always—in the case of the seniors—graduate—and—in the case of the rest—join the staff with no professional reporting experience. Many use slivers of busy schedules to contribute stories or edit them. Together, they and I have invented ways to make it all work, to create an award-winning community newspaper with an unorthodox staffing structure: 30 to 40 people under 18. The person who takes this job will face problems I haven’t and will need to change operations as events, life, technology and schedules evolve.

Finally, a brief history of how the newspaper got to where it is today: In May of 2018, 17 high school and middle school students decided to start the Pelham Examiner following the closure of the News of Pelham. I was involved because I’d edited some of the students at the News of Pelham and on other volunteer projects. We started publishing in June 2018 and added staff and figured things out as we went along. When we came out of the worst of Covid, it was clear the Examiner had become the community news source for residents of the town. But organizationally the Examiner was still just me and three dozen kids. If this newsroom were to be sustainable, I realized, it would need a formal organizational structure. It needed to find ways to fundraise to pay a new executive director as well as the paper’s bills. During the past three years, we’ve created a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation (The Hudson Valley Local News Lab Inc.), elected a board of directors and officers and started fundraising. The next step in our sustainability plan is to find someone to take on this amazing job.

Which brings me back to creativity. We have the board of directors and a part-time bookkeeper and will have a part-time development manager. But the Examiner is still a small organization. For the new executive director, the day-to-day job will be much like it is now: Working with 30 to 40 staffers to put out the paper.

If you’re interested, please send your resume to me at [email protected]. I’m also here to answer any questions.

All the best,

Rich Zahradnik

Executive Director