I’m cross posting this here hoping to lasso a few more qualified candidates. 🙂 This originally appeared on the Apex blog.
Apex is looking for a blog editor. Are you interested?
Hey, you might wonder. Didn’t they recently hire Sarah Olson?
Indeed, we did. And Sarah has been and remains insanely awesome. She has done a great job. I’ve discovered that she’s a smart lady with a wide and varied set of unique skills. For this reason, she’s agreed to step down as blog editor and step up to do some difficult software development type work for Apex (that I hope to assist her with). This will be some seriously cool stuff once completed. For now, though, it will remain super secret. She remains on our masthead as an editor and person of high importance to our overall goals.
A few things up front about the “job” of Apex Blog Editor … this is a non-currency position, meaning there is no money to be made. But you do get amazing intangibles like a free Apex shirt, merchandise when we have it, and you get free copies of some of the most valuable items in the world (to me, at least)–free Apex books! You do have to ask for them, though, because I am one forgetful and overworked publisher type.
Job specifics:
* As blog editor, you will work with the publisher (me) and senior editor (Janet Harriett) to implement our strategy of making the blog a fine source of genre entertainment, discussion, and a means of keeping Apex fans apprised of the latest company news.
* You will be responsible for getting at least three articles posted a week from our blogging roster.
* You will be responsible for making sure we have new posts everyday of the week. This isn’t as ominous and insane as it sounds. For example, our Sunday posts can be “Link Roundups” or an “Apex Week in Review” with links to our past week’s contents.
* You will be responsible for light line editing of the articles posted from our blogging rosters.
* Our blog editor will need to make sure articles we run aren’t insensitive to normal human beings (not running an article such as one hating on Community, or more serious stuff like blatantly homophobic or racist essays with little or no merit). Naturally, anything that goes up on this blog is the responsibility of the publisher (me), so I need a gatekeeper who can watch out for such things (since I can’t Overlord over everything no matter how hard I try, and oh, I do try).
* The blog editor will prepare and format our bloggers’ posts.
* You will be responsible for maintaining the blogger roster. When spots invariably come open, with the assistance of the publisher and senior editor, you will seek suitable replacements.
* Land at least one quality guest blog post per month.
* You will maintain an editorial calendar.
Skills Required:
* Moderate knowledge of the WordPress blogging platform
* Excellent organizational skills
* Decent line editing skills
* A little knowledge of HTML is quite handy
* Solid communication skills
A candidate needs to be able to spend 5-10 hours a week doing the job and can promise at least a year of service.
All interested parties please send a query to Jason Sizemore (jason@apexbookcompany.com).
This all sounds quite formal and professional… the reality is that I’m not a demanding guy about this stuff. Knowing that it is essentially a volunteer-filled position, I recognize the dynamics that creates. I do try to make the job fun when I can. You get to interact with some great writers (Gary Braunbeck, BJ Burrow, heck, just look at the list of bloggers in the schedule in the right column). All the same, I want someone who takes the responsibility of blog editor seriously, someone who will work hard to make a name for themselves for doing quality work, like Sarah Olson, Sarah Peduzzi, MG Ellington, and Sarah Brandel have done.
And being named “Sarah” IS NOT a requirement of the job.
If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me or leave a comment below.
Applications will close on August 10th.
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