University of Michigan, 1975: BA in journalism, secondary teaching certificate University of Michigan, 1976: MA in journalism
Social/Volunteer Organizations
AAJA, NABJ, NAHJ, NAJA, ONA Wayne State University Press Great Lakes Books Series advisory board Council of Asian Pacific Americans advisory board
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Joe Grimm is a visiting journalist at Michigan State University's School of Journalism where he teaches reporting and writing. He is also developing online distance-learning courses in media editing and journalism history. The history course used some remarkable Chicago Tribune color pages from 1890-1940.
Grimm was newsroom recruiter and staff development editor at the Detroit Free Press from 1990 until 8/8/08. He worked with the recruiting teams at Knight Ridder and Gannett. Grimm coordinated staff selection, training and education for newsroom staffers and the summer internship program. He has interviewed hundreds of people, reviewed thousands of job candidates on paper and recruited at dozens of job fairs and college campuses. In 1993, he established an annual jobs fair. In 1997, he launched the JobsPage, a journalism career site, at www.jobspage.com
He spun off a journalism careers blog, "Ask the Recruiter" in 2003. It became part of the Poynter Institute's Career Center in 2006. He has previously been a regular contributor to Editor & Publisher magazine, the Newspaper Association of America's Fusion magazine and UNITY: Journalists of Color.
In 2007, he published two books: "Breaking In" is a guide to landing and acing newspaper internships; "Bringing the News" is a collection of 100-year-old postcard images of newspaper hawkers. In 2008, he published "The Best of Ask the Recruiter."
Grimm created "100 Questions and Answers About Arab Americans" in 2000. He posted that guide the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and it became a timely and heavily trafficked publication.
Grimm joined the Free Press in 1983 and has been a copy editor, news editor, front-page designer, weekend editor and ombudsman. He began his newspaper career at the Oakland Press where he was a copy editor, wire editor, copy desk chief, page-one designer, regional editor and associate editor. He has bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism and a teaching certificate from the University of Michigan.
He has been an adjunct professor at Oakland University since about 1980. He has taught media editing, copy editing, basic reporting, editorial writing and photojournalism.
Grimm is also an armchair historian. He co-authored "Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors," which was the Center for Great Lakes Culture's 2003 non-fiction book of the year. A companion book, "Songquest," came out in June, 2005. His compilation "Michigan Voices: Our State's History in the Words of the People Who lived It," has been through several printings since first being published in 1987.
