Friday, May 04, 2007

Well Pound My Pavement

Matt at the Indy's Media Blog points out that the News-Press is hiring! Given at this point even the scabs are leaving the building, it's no surprise they could use a reporter (or 15). But the want ads on JournalismJobs.com are still pretty funny. For instance the one for a reporter says:

The Santa Barbara News-Press, an award-winning 41,000-circulation daily on the beautiful South Coast, seeks multi-talented Reporters with a flair for clear, concise, colorful writing and a passion for pounding the pavement for stories. The right candidates will have the ability to give our Web site a boost by helping create the kind of interactive content that will have readers wanting to come back for more and check out our print edition.

First, how long can the N-P call itself award-winning? I mean George Chakiris is "award-winning" so I guess once you're award-winning you're award-winning for life, but.... Other folks have mentioned how that circulation figure is out of date, but one assumes that Amerpsand had to get the copy for this ad in before they knew everyone else would know they had lost 9.5% of their subscribers. After all, I assume it wasn't a surprise to them that people had been dropping the paper as if it came infected with herpes--figure if they can suggest people like child porn, we might as well sling some trash right back--but then again, with the number of employees that have left the paper, maybe there is no one left to do the accounting.

Second, there's the phrase "colorful writing and a passion for pounding the pavement for stories." If the paper's example in its own ad for colorful writing is relying on the hoary cliche "pounding the pavement," then at least a job candidate can suss out the bar for employment isn't set too high.

Third, they want a candidate to "help create [...] interactive content." Huh? Beyond their pathetic website--it's both ugly and unfriendly--only being ACTIVE for those who subscribe, right now there's nothing that's INTERactive. Will the News-Press have the guts to allow for comments on its website? Any and all comments? This could be really fun.

In other N-P news, both Barney Brantingham and Craig Smith have mentioned that people who have cancelled their subscriptions since the slime job on Jerry Roberts have received letters from none other than the Nipper himself. According to Barney the letter includes the following lines:

I am sorry to hear that you have cancelled your subscription to the Santa Barbara News-Press. It was especially distressing to read that it was Sunday’s story about child pornography found on a News-Press computer that influenced your decision. The article is not libelous; it is based on facts as presented in police reports and court documents.

Which leaves me wondering if it's the Baron (of Physiology) who is dumb or if he just thinks all his readers are. Most fiction is "based on facts." Nothing guarantees that inferences from facts are automatically factual. What's most amazing is how the Nipper in this letter claims "police reports" are good enough to base your facts on when Ampersand's argument to get the hard drives back is that the police aren't together enough to do the proper investigation.

Just thinking about all these facts gives me a huge headache.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

eXTReMe Tracker