The Trentonian

Check this Ad posted on JournalismJobs:


Exciting daily tabloid in New Jersey's captial city seeks a copy editor/paginator who knows his or her way around Quark. Ability to work with little supervision is required. Take a blank page and fill it. Fetch wire stories and edit staff stories. Design the page. Write headlines. Put photos on the page. Write cutlines. Print the page. Proof it. Make corrections. And do it all with a smile and a flair. (A twisted sense of humor would be a plus.) (A tabloid view of life would be another plus.) E-mail a brief introduction and contact info to: editor@trentonian.com


I think they are aiming for someone in grade school...

 

Grade school would violate labor laws... so you should say middle school or junior high

 

Roasted Nuts.

There, I said it.

 

Dammit! You beat me to it!

 

Ahem. *cracking knuckles*

This job ad should read:

Exciting daily tabloid (well, it is daily and it is a tabloid, so it';s not a lie if two-thirds of the words are true) in New Jersey's captial city (better than calling it Trenton, perhaps some dope who has never seen a map of Jersey will apply) seeks a copy editor/paginator who knows his or her way around Quark (because no one here knows it). Ability to work with little supervision is required (damn straight, we fired all the editors because Jelenic needed an extra vacation). Take a blank page (it's a smaller page than you're used to because we keep cutting newspring) and fill it (with crap). Fetch wire stories (good dog! ruff! ruff!) and edit staff stories (by staff we mean the freelancers we hire because we don't have to pay them benefits). Design the page (don't design it, just put six columns of text with no pictures). Write headlines (put them in huge fonts). Put photos on the page (take the photos yourself). Write cutlines (basically do fucking everything). Print the page (by this, we mean go to Kinkos and print out the entire paper yourself on your own dime). Proof it (and be careful since your correspondents are Cockdianian). Make corrections (or don't, we don't really care, just for all thigns holy make sure to get the Rutgers baseball results in for Jelenic). And do it all with (vodka) a smile (vodka) and a (vodka) flair (vodka). (A twisted sense of humor would be a plus.) (So would an ability to bend over and take it in the ass on a daily basis) (A tabloid view of life would be another plus.) (No life at all would be a huge plus) E-mail a brief introduction (as brief as one of our stories) and contact info to: editor@trentonian.com (holy shit Bob finally got rid of the phones)

 

I've been told by someone very much in the know that there could be some changes happening here soon.

So, what's life in Trenton like? Or the surrounding towns?

 

I was going to say this is far and away one of the worst papers I've ever seen but BYH nailed it. So never mind.

 

I thumbed through a recent edition, and the sports wasn't terrible.

 

Define "wasn't."

Actually, the sports is the best part of the paper, unless you count their page 9 girl (or whatever page has the tits and ass). With Jelenic ranting and raving mere minutes away from the office, sports has no choice but to be passable. Of course, passable here means pages and pages and pages of youth and Little League garbage.

 

At any rate, I'd keep my eye on this place. Change is abrewin'.

 

That Page Whatever feature should be renamed Girls of the Trailer Park.

 

Design is terrible, pay is poor, the news section is a joke, and the corporation is everything BYH said and then some.

That said, the local sports coverage is the best in that part of the state. Yes, that means too much Little League. But it also means high school sports, and while the paper may be a shell of what it was a decade ago, it still covers preps very well, if excessively. That's the bread and butter, and they do a good job, especially since its competition gutted its local sports staff. There is a core group there that plugs away and does good work despite the cloud of evil that lingers above.

This opening is news side, which despite just sending a reporter to the Times-Picayune, is very weak.

As for the rumors of change, I'd be stunned if Jelenic gave up his home town rag anytime before hitting the grave.