Q: Would it be improper to add a reference who works at a competing paper? This editor attempted to hire me, and I turned down the job, simply because it was a City Hall beat, and I prefer to write about business.
I feel he could attest to his attempt to hire me, based on the fact that I routinely beat his newspaper in coverage of overlapping beats.
On the Lookout
A: I like this idea, with a couple of caveats.
I would love to talk to an editor who could talk ruefully about how a competitor was eating his lunch. Before you do that, you have to tackle two problems: quality and quantity.
Few editors enjoy telling other editors that they are getting beat on stories. Will this one? You will have to take him into your confidence and ask him what he would say about you. Although he might, while recruiting you, admit where his staff is coming up short, you have to ask what he would say to other editors. He might flatter you with this information to recruit you, but what does he have to gain by admitting this shortcoming to peers in other markets? Is he put out about not being able to recruit you? He has to be invested in you somehow to do that, so you need to determine whether that is the case.
The second issue is determining how much he knows about how you work. Clearly, he sees the results of what you do, but does he know enough about how you do it? He needs to know quite a bit to be better than references with whom you have worked firsthand.
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