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For writers with sufficient glibness, there are many ways to make a buck without breaking too much of a sweat. These include:
Producing product or image pamphlets for corporate products and
images
It's often best to start small here and build up, but jobs in
freelance corporate communications writing are lucrative. I personally
began my career in corporate America back in the last century, writing
about the effect that cable modems would have on high speed gas and
electric home meter reading. I had been in the company for a week. I
called the chairman. "What effect will cable modems have on high speed
gas and electric home meter reading?" I asked him. "I have no fucking
idea," he said. "What should I say in the article?" I inquired. "Make it
up," he replied, and I knew that I was in a zone I recognized well and
was quite prepared for after a decade in the nether regions of show
business.
Lifestyle pieces for women's magazines mining one's own
sexual/social/marital/professional experiences for $3 per word
Again,
you have to know the right people (many of whom read this Web site), but
once you're in the possibilities are virtually endless. Have a goiter?
Willing to have your picture taken and talk about the heartbreak of
people who are rude to people who have goiters? There's a magazine for
you to pitch about it. Hate your dog? Wanna say why? Could mean five
grand for you, if you know the right editor. Are you cheating/being
cheated on by your significant otherness? Again, turn that experiential
trash into cash.
Being the Q in the Q and A
You have to pick your subjects well here.
Like, engaging with local politicians is probably more trouble than it's
worth; you could end up having to educate yourself about traffic
patterns and library funding. But a Q&A with a personal stylist or
publicist looking for personal publicity? Or a cable news mini-star out
marketing his or her vile persona? Piece of cake, baby, and probably a
nice fat sinecure for you, once the word gets out that you could make
Michael Chertoff look good.
Media critic
Hey, if you can get somebody to publish your random
thoughts on stuff that everybody has thoughts on, you're really getting
somewhere. This is to be distinguished from media reporters; as I will
outline below, the job of reporting is far too lowdown in bullshit
potential to be all that alluring for the truly ambitious.
Blogger
Bad money, but if you're nasty enough, lots of power. Try to
establish yourself as someone qualified to rattle on for screen after
screen with no reporting involved. Several years ago, when I was writing
for Esquire, I determined very early on that those who had to report on
their subject 1) took a long time to do it, 2) had to talk to a lot of
people they wouldn't normally be interested in, and 3) worked too hard
for their money. Consequently, I determined pretty much from the get-go
to do nothing but spin out a fine blend of hostility, speculation and
wind as long as a publisher would let me. I'd like to think that was an
early adopter of the zeitgeist that now runs much of the Internet that
matters.
Professional boulevardier
This would include a) novelists who write a
novel every five years, 2) ghost writers of diet or religious books, 3)
superagents whose sub-agents do most of the heavy lifting, 4)
super-executives whose subordinates do most of the heavy lifting, 5)
super-editors whose sub-editors do most of the heavy lifting, 6)
itinerant lunchers who make sure they're at Michael's on Wednesday,
because that's when this site writes about who was at Michael's. There
are quite a few people who lunch in midtown whose career is primarily
based on where they are seen lunching. You want to be one of those.
There are a ton of media jobs in my new book 100 Bullshit Jobs... And How to Get Them, including advertising executive, spin doctor, media trainer, as well as a host of other gigs in broadcasting, cable and journalism. Buy the book. Everybody else is.
And that concludes the half hour I had to spend on this. Except to say that we're having a party in celebration of bullshit and the jobs that are replete with it on the 14th. Here's the info...
**
Celebrate the release of 100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them June 14 at mediabistro's next Edit Staff Party in New York
Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune and the author of a host of best-selling books, including What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing The Elephant, Sun Tzu Was A Sissy, Rome, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation (Atlas Books) and most recently, the ground-breaking 100 Bullshit Jobs... And How To Get Them (Collins).
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