AOL is hiring

Sounds promising. I hope they pull this off, because if they're successful it will lead to copycats.

 

Jerry Levin and Dick Parsons will be coming after you tonight...

 

Has anybody heard of or applied for a job as a Patch editor-reporter? I see these jobs advertised for towns in Rhode Island (three on Aquidneck Island, which includes Newport) and a bunch in Massachusetts. I was actually contacted by an AOL person from New York through my Monster resume (and she talked about nearly as much money as I was making at a 100,000-circ daily before my job got hacked), but because I live more than 20 miles away from the island, it got no further.
I've applied for Rhode Island Patch editor and a couple of Mass. Jobs and heard nothing, but I keep seeing these jobs come up again and again. Saw them again, and I'm applying for the third or fourth time.
Patch is also in California and a couple of other states. Any tales?

 

Several of my now-former colleagues work for Patch.com, most as town editors. They give you a laptop, Blackberry and, I think, a police scanner, maybe a digital camera too. But you're constantly on call.

The pay is probably $40K tops -- a buddy who just got hired is being paid $35K with a bonus that could get up to $41K -- and you work 24-7/365 as of now. There are plans to add more regional editors and night editors and various other people to back up the editors in each town, but right now it's pretty much all on you.

You get a couple of months to ramp up the site, which means going around to all the politicians and businesses and other community leaders and introducing yourself. After that, the site is supposed to change frequently. I'm not sure if there's a set rule for that... but from what I've heard, I wouldn't be surprised. There seem to be a lot of "guidelines" that turn into mandates after you're hired. You have to be at all the major meetings, with stringers -- which you have to find, hire, and, I think, even deal with invoices for -- for the fluffier stuff... like sports. You also have to edit all that copy and post it online, along with your own photos.

Basically, it's a one-man shop with constant deadlines.

 

Had some friends go through boom-and-bust with AOL back in the day, so I'll watch this with great caution.

 

What the hell? I haven't paid attention one to AOL since the spring of 2001.

 

For some people, this will be a very good thing. But that's a minority (No offense, Gingerbread). For most, it will be not-quite-middle-class income with limited (to be optimistic) benefits.
I took a pay cut in my current job from sports journalism in 2007, a significant one. And one thing I've learned in the following three years is that I'd have to take a much worse cut to go back.

 

Was on the AOL job site yesterday and didn't see any sports jobs there. I did an ad on craigslist looking for Patch reporters, writers, photographers (presumably stringer gigs, and I wonder what's up).
I wonder if they're doing another sports housecleaning. I used to be an AOL blogger (unpaid, but an occasional guest on their weekly streaming show) before that. The AOL guys I dealt with were swept aside, and a couple of bloggers I knew (including their All-Star blogger contest winner - I was a finalist) who applied for Fanhouse jobs weren't given the time of day.