When Tom Shroder took a buyout from his job as editor of The Washington Post Magazine last September, he didn’t want to leave behind the perks of life in the newsroom.
Despite the cutbacks, there was a lot that kept him energized — the critical thinking that comes with editing long-form narratives, the relationships he built with writers, the desire to help people tell their stories.
Hoping to keep this energy alive, Shroder created Story Surgeons, a coaching service that lets him continue to work with writers outside of a newsroom. Since starting the service in October, he’s coached dozens of people with varying writing abilities. And he’s gotten paid — anywhere from $22 to $10,000 per client.
His service is one example of how former journalists are putting the years of experience they gained in newsrooms to good use by pursuing independent, financially sound ventures.
“As I was contemplating leaving the Post and thinking about what I’d miss most, I realized it was the challenge and satisfaction of encountering all kinds of writers with stories to tell and a passion to tell them, and helping them discover the best possible way to do that,” Shroder said. “I realized that through the connectedness of the Web, I could both get my message out there and communicate” with those writers.
Shroder’s coaching service has enabled him to further develop his editing skills, make some money and give writers the kind of one-to-one editing they say they’re not getting from their editors.
“In most cases, it’s rare these days when you get an editor at a publishing company who really gets into the heart of a story and is fully attuned to it to the point that the writers are,” he said in a phone interview. “It happens, but my experience is that it’s the exception. This is a problem in newsrooms, too.”
Shroder’s clients so far include a Virginian-Pilot columnist who sought advice on how to improve his work, a man who wanted help with a speech, and two Washington Post investigative reporters — Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz — who asked him to edit a book they’re writing about the Chandra Levy case.
Shroder charges 3.5 cents per word for basic pieces that require a single review and 10 cents per word for more complicated projects that require several edits. (Story Surgeons isn’t his only source of income. In addition to his Post pension, the newspaper is paying him to edit Gene Weingarten’s column.)
People are craving Shroder’s help. “That was my whole question: Are people really going to be willing to pay for this kind of service?” he recalled. “But there are enormous amounts of people who want to write. Look at all the money people spend going to writing seminars. Some people just look at it as an education.”
It helps that prior to starting Story Surgeons, Shroder had already built a reputation as a respected newspaper editor. He was Dave Barry’s editor at The Miami Herald when Barry won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988. At The Washington Post, he edited Gene Weingarten’s stories, including his 2008 Pulitzer-winning piece, “Pearls Before Breakfast.”
Shroder said that although Weingarten jokingly refers to him as “Tom the Butcher,” he likes to think of himself as “Tom the Surgeon” — keeping stories alive, making them healthier. “A story is like a living thing,” Shroder said. “You don’t just want to chop it up willy-nilly.”
Since starting Story Surgeons, he’s acquired some new skills — namely, how to edit a novel. The process, he noted, isn’t that different from editing long-form nonfiction. “It’s just that in a novel you can actually invent stuff if the facts don’t line up properly,” he said. He’s now researching a book proposal of his own.
Shroder’s not the only former journalist who has left the newsroom and turned to coaching. Andria Krewson, who left her job as an editor at The Charlotte Observer last April after 23 years there, is working with a group of neighborhood leaders who want to become better citizen journalists.
Krewson said she plans to teach them skills that a hyperlocal neighborhood reporter or Web site editor needs to know, such as how to make ethical decisions, write search-optimized headlines and find reference materials about fair use and copyright.
Krewson’s former colleague, longtime Charlotte Observer columnist Jeff Elder, is now training professionals on how to use social media. Since taking a buyout from the Observer in November, he has begun consulting with a wide range of businesses and professionals, including sports franchises, a chiropractor and a company that makes bathroom stalls.
“I’m able to advise businesses about traditional media and new media,” Elder said via e-mail. “Years ago, and in a different era for media, I might not have been drawn to that, but things are changing. Ordinary people are creating a great deal of media, and they need guidance. That’s worthwhile.”
The money’s not so bad, either. “At this early stage of the game, I have opportunities to make more than I ever did as a journalist,” he said. “The difference is, it’s entirely up to me to make that happen.”
