I am the news edi­tor of a weekly paper, and I have the hard­est time recruit­ing writ­ers for the news section.

Last semes­ter, I had a good, solid group of about seven peo­ple I could rely on. How­ever, most of them are not writ­ing this semes­ter due to busy sched­ules, heavy class loads, etc. I have story ideas and issues that need to be inves­ti­gated and reported on,  but I have very few peo­ple will­ing to write.

How do you find writ­ers who know what they’re doing — writ­ers who do not need very much train­ing? The kind who know what a lead is, know how to use the inverted pyra­mid style? Any­one else dealt with a short­age of writers?