In case you were wondering.

The Guardian’s Edward Helmore wrote about HuffPo vs. The Daily Beast today. And Business Insider noticed something odd about Helmore’s article. Helmore wrote:

“This week, Brown hired the veteran Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz while Huffington hired Newsweek’s chief political reporter Howard Fineman and media columnist Keith Kelly from Rupert Murdoch‘s New York Post.”

Really?
No, not really. Kelly e-mailed Business Insider to say, “News to me.”

You know who is leaving the New York Post, though? Richard Johnson, Page Six editor, is heading to LA to head up a new digital venture for News Corp. But that doesn’t really explain how Kelly got involved.

Looking for a job in journalism? Don’t discount the not-for-profits.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports on the growing trend of nonprofit news organizations that supply content to the cash-and-staff-strapped mainstream media.

Heck, the Center for Public Integrity recently added six journalists to its 45-person staff.

We see all our friends dying on the vine,” international director David Kaplan told Kurtz. “The irony is we’re doing pretty well, and we have a chance to fill these gaping holes.”

Of course, nonprofits, relying on donations and grants as they do, have their own issues: like writing a story that ticks off a donor. “We decide what we want to do and how we want to do it,” says Bill Buzenberg, the CPI’s executive director says, noting though that donors “may hate it and they may never fund us again, that’s their right.”

And so many of these nonprofits, though not the CPI, are so new it’s hard to tell whether they’ll still be employing journalists in 5 to ten years. The Texas Tribune just launched last year, and the well-funded Bay Citizen launched in 2010. Hardly enough time to prove a valid business model—but in the meantime, at least there are still some watchdogs.

Howard Kurtz drops this nugget in a piece analyzing the Washington Times’ fall: “the Times is also doing selective hiring, such as doubling the size of what is now a six-person investigative team under veteran reporter Jerry Seper.”

We’re told that the very first question interviewees at The Times are asked is “Do you have any concerns about the paper’s leadership?” And this was a policy in place even before the shakeup/armed guards roaming the building craziness in November.

Anyway, take that as you like.

Howard Kurtz reports on the White House giving access to journalists who have been ignored in the past: reporters of color from minority outlets. President Obama has spoken with Telemundo, CNN En Espanol, and his first print interview after taking office, Kurtz reports, was with Black Enterprise magazine. Apparently White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is all on board with the idea too.

This is good news for media in general (though Kurtz notes the president “is broadening the circle of access to include more sympathetic outlets”): a USA Today piece from last year put minority journalists’ numbers pretty low:

• At TV stations: 24%
• In radio: 12%
• In print media: 13.5%.

(This percentage seems to encompass both those working in mainstream media and niche ethnic media.)

Then there’s the pragmatic view, as taken by Howard Adamsky, a recruiter with 20 years experience. He writes:

Say goodbye to political correctness. Your services are not being used to be politically correct. The promotion of fairness is a fool’s errand. You client is depending on you to support the acquisition of the very best candidate. End of story. Discriminate with passionate abandon against anyone who is not qualified to do the job and let HR sweat the numbers. Do this one thing and you can rest assured that you are doing your job.

So which is it? Do desperate times call for desperate measures? Or is now more than ever a time to recruit diversity to your newsrooms? Does Obama’s inclusive attitude even matter?

From FishbowlDC:

Yesterday on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz spoke with Andrea McCarren, M.E. Sprengelmeyer and Ernie Bjorkman about losing their jobs.

McCarren was recently let go from WJLA. “You never expect it to happen to you. And that is one of my major regrets, is I didn’t have a Plan B, because like a lot of these guys, I worked hard, was fiercely loyal to my company, was available for work and volunteered for extra shifts 24/7. You don’t think it’s going to happen to you. And as one of the viewers had written to me, you don’t understand what it feels like until you’ve gotten the word. And he described it, I think appropriately, as it feels like somebody has ripped your heart out and stomped on it.”