I was laid off in April.
Since then, I have been responsible for sending in several applications each week to newspapers across the globe to appease the unemployment gods who control my financial destiny. Every week, I scan journalism job sites for potential positions. I have literally read hundreds and hundreds of job posts.
I started complaining on Twitter that a disturbingly high number of job posts for positions as copy editor had spelling errors and typos in them. Come on people! A newspaper should, at the very least, not misspell the town or city they are representing. And an editor should know that when opening quote marks are used, there should be closing quote marks. It's pretty basic stuff.
Monday, was my breaking point. I stopped being nice and ignoring the typos. In fact, I threw them in the employers face. And it go their attention.
I printed off an ad posted on journalismjobs.com and I grabbed my red pen. Scrawling corrections across the ad, I made it consistent with AP style. Then I scanned the ad back into my computer. I wrote a cover letter, attached my resume and some clips and the scan of the edited job posting. The package was e-mailed to the offending newspaper.
Honestly I didn't expect anything in response. But I was surprised. The offending editor at the paper responded in less than 24 hours and promised to look at my application further.
Moral of the story: Telling someone they are an idiot might land you a job.
No comments:
Post a Comment