Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Credit Crunch Journalism: Using the Comments Section to Apply for a Job



Roger Alton, Independent editor, blogs. The first comment in response - a bunch of suggestions to improve the paper, as Alton requested - is also a job application. Smart. From Ed Gallois.

...3. Keep the fluff in the features section. Let the other papers run stories on John Sergeant quitting Strictly Come Dancing and stick to the important stuff. You might lose short term hits on your website, but your reputation for being THE thinking man's newspaper will build and spread. There's a reason the Economist's circulation figures remain steady while all national papers lose popularity...


...
10. Hire me. I'm cheap, hardworking, talented (ask Steve Richards or John Rentoul), NCTJ qualified and want to make the Independent better.

Lots more ideas for the Indy here.
Ed Gallois here.

3 comments:

Angela Phillips said...

Anyone who can refer to the "thinking man's newspaper" in 2008 doesn't deserve a job on the Indy which makes great play of the fact that it doesn't need a women's page because women are already equal.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link, Robin. I thought it was worth a try - although Roger has yet to call!

Fair point by Angela but "thinking person's newspaper" sounds a bit too politically correct for my liking, so I went with the phrase that people already know.

Robin Hunt said...

I'm sure he will. Let us know if he does.