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Topic: jaded attitude appeals 2 employers, publishers?
| Author | Message |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/9/2007 8:49:00 AM | show profile I have an odd question. Has anyone noticed that editors, publishers, employers seem to prefer applicants/freelancers to have jaded attitude? It strikes me they seem to like their applicants a bit -- I don't think these are the right words -- bored and smug and cynical, maybe even self-satisfied? I see editors and employers putting more stock in this, maybe attributing it to confidence, and that confidence, in turn, to competence? Things have changed since the days of Dale Carnegie's interest in winning friends and influencing people, methinks. |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/9/2007 9:22:38 AM | show profile | email poster That is an interesting observation. Something to think about. :) I add that this group draws a line though at what they have decided to be legitimate work. I think they place more value on pounding pavement to get published in mainstream press vs pounding the pavement to write a well-rounded story and publish online yourself. There is an assumption these top brass make that if you've published yourself it simply cannot qualify as legitimate. But, now I'll toss out a generalization -- I just think publishers/managing editors in this business are of narrow minds in the USA. They don't get it - they don't understand how the real world has changed, and they run from hi-tech. So, most of what I write about outside of my day job is to expose what is wrong with the media elite. I gain no points for it of course - but I don't care. Me against them. At least my readers (so they tell me) are learning to question what the media creates. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/9/2007 11:15:47 AM | show profile When I was out in the dating world, there was a category of men who liked women who were snooty. Even to them. This never made sense to me, any more than I would date twice a guy who was domineering or an ass. It just seems like the snark we see in editorial is getting respect as a valued personality trait -- a cool, dismissive quality. Maybe I'm imagining things, but I don't think so. Maybe the rightwingers are right, and there's a left wing media elite plotting out there, lips disdainfully curled. Off topic, when I pitch, I pitch on the merits of work I've done in mainstream, on print, national books -- or good niche'/trade publications. Maybe I should just leave out the niche/trade pieces. I always fancied the fact that I could write about anything made me a better writer, but it might be like a second-class community college compared to Columbia or something as far as they're concerned. Food for thought! |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/9/2007 11:39:37 AM | show profile | email poster bunk I agree in theory... I have no proof. :-) other than my observations about hiring practices at the NYT, which for whatever reason get me slammed on this board. (How dare I slam the media's darling newspaper???) That is why I laugh at this newspaper business today. Solid journalism skills no longer count in my view. Newsday actively hires non-white males. NYT actively hires those it knows through a friend, and or book authors. Got an MA in journalism at Harvard? Hell, good chance to get a job. (My alma mater's journalism dept was far better than Harvard! Go UNT!) Now....think about this. In the past few years I've authored 4,000 stories, edited another 3,000.... I'm a bloody work horse. Does not count, because these were for an online news service. Show me ONE (just one) newspaper journalist /editor or anyone at the AP/Reuters etc., who has 7,000 pieces to their name in the past 28 months. Just one.... and I'll shut up. Damn right I'm arrogantly proud of this little factoid. |
| candylilacs | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:03:41 PM | show profile I am finding that it's more about "Who you know" and who gladhands whom. I think it was worse on the East Coast (sorry, guys!) because many people did hire on the basis of graduating from Harvard (yes, all white males.) I think it was also the first time I heard the phrase, "Pretty good for a state school." I laughed because I couldn't think anyone was really that classist and arrogant. I was like, "Wow, we're not in SoCal anymore." Seriously, in LA there is a bit of a USC journo mafia going on, but not quite to that extent. It does seem to be about who you know, though. So make friends with prominent columnists and writers, folks! ------ http://www.mswritesguide.blogspot.com |
| WordyBird | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:04:08 PM | show profile WOW, I was going to say it's like dating, but you beat me to it. I'm not sure how to say this without seeming "ageist," but sometimes, to me at least (and I'm not an employer), what comes off as "seasoned" at 40 could come off as smug or self-satisfied at 25. I will say this: The cover letters I've sent in which I've had a bit of 'tude have had a higher response rate than those in which I've attempted to be charming in illustrating my accomplishments. I've referred to "salt" on my resume, talked about being "plugged into" R & D, half-slammed Congress and a certain governmental organization, and stated that my salary requirements are what they are because of my years of experience. It's kind of, "Yo, here I am. Here's what I can do. You like? You call. You don't like? It wasn't meant to be and someone else will." Which, BTW, works very well in dating. Anyway, they called--but they needed someone sooner than I could start and the salary, while good for someone with ten fewer years in the field, would have been a pay cut for me. |
| bjoconnorfla | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:10:20 PM | show profile I don't know what you mean by cynical attitude (toward what? the business, politics, readers?), but I doubt that gushing niavete will get you very far, and that's what shows up in an awful lot of "I-want-to-save-the-world-by-covering-the-water-board-at-your-newspaper" cover letters. |
| Linda F | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:46:09 PM | show profile What do you mean by smug and cynical? I get the feeling that whatever attitude you're noticing gets translated by hirers as "successful." For freelancing anyway, freelancers who beg for assignments seem to be less likely to get them than those writers who are so busy that they just don't care (or who pretend they're busy, and/or act like they don't care). To play off of the dating analogy even more, it's the same phenomenon where you're more likely to get attention from potential partners when you're already attached than when you're actively looking! Linda -- http://www.lindaformichelli.com Renegade Writer Blog: http://www.therenegadewriter.com http://www.writeformagazines.com |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 7/9/2007 3:12:06 PM | show profile I don't think it's jaded as much as being confident and secure in your talents. However, that doesn't mean you need to be sullen or disagreeable with people. In a sense, you shift from being a salesman (of yourself) to a consultant (discussing how your abilities can assist them because you don't need to sell yourself -- that's a given). |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/9/2007 3:48:54 PM | show profile | email poster Ha! Love that, save the world at the water board! ;) Okay, I may have been like that 18 years ago, I admit it. And yes, it made my editors and fellow reporters want to squash me like a bug... I don't know -- maybe I just miss things like manners, courtesy, kindness, um, real human beings. To me, those things are timeless. Linda, I agree 100 percent about looking busy -- fortunately, now I don't just look busy, I am! And I'm with you to say that begging got no one anywhere jobhunting, freelancing or dating. I have never liked pathetic ;) But look at this board. We're venting our neuroses as people do, fine, but sometimes meanness rules. I try not to succumb to it, but once in a while IT JUST FEELS SO GOOD. Maybe I mean that in Devil Wears Prada, I expect snarky snideness from Meryl's secretary but I think it's sad that at 60, Meryl's that way too. And what a career when a board discussion on tantrum/passive-aggressive 'artiste' personalities in the workplace draw maybe 40 percent of the people cool with them? I overgeneralize, I know. Ah the seedy underbelly of journalism. (Leaves, humming 'What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love') |
| jazzprincess77 | Posted – 7/9/2007 4:08:19 PM | show profile what does this mean? "Newsday actively hires non-white males." |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/9/2007 4:27:07 PM | show profile I wondered myself Jazz -- I concluded that maybe it meant labeling candidates and giving them preference based on that instead of their work. |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/9/2007 5:57:32 PM | show profile | email poster That means what it says... we discussed this on a much earlier thread about hiring practices. Newsday, as I found out in 2004 as an unemployed old white man, was only interested in so called 'minority' candidates. |
| Bleak Spouse | Posted – 7/9/2007 6:25:37 PM | show profile Most editors are bored and smug and cynical. They're overeducated, overworked, and underpaid. |
| candylilacs | Posted – 7/9/2007 10:03:41 PM | show profile Nah, I think they decide who they're going to hire. They already have someone in mind and the person closest to that (usually themselves) wins! I got my job and I wasn't particularly enthused in the interview because I wasn't sure I wanted it, but I could tell they wanted me, a lot. It turns out they had been turned down by a previous applicant and were insecure and unsure they would find someone. It worked in my favor. ------ http://www.mswritesguide.blogspot.com |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/10/2007 12:08:19 AM | show profile If editors are insecure, what are publishers! It takes a lot of ganas to publish anything, but boy there are a couple egos on wheels out there! And some very nice people, the kind I love to work with ;) |
| Telling It Like It Is | Posted – 7/10/2007 12:27:45 AM | show profile | email poster o.k. I take it the majority of you are on the East coast. Yes? My ranting about a cheesecake dangling employer which some replied to was about my life in Cow Town. I live, now prepare yourselves...I live and work in....Arizona. Now about the snoddy, rude, yet self assured smug people. I do think that has merit 'cause nice is not gettin me anywhere. Granted in Cow Town I have accomplished working for two ad agencies and one publishing company. "Ya mean they have those in dem der hills?" Why yes we do. Only they are run by richie rich o's who usually are submerged in expensive Scottsdale, have fake tans, bleached hair and teeth and do not have the faintest idea of needing to make money to, ya know......pay the bills, eat...buy gas. While in College taking grad classes, my professor said, "Go East or West," but alas so far I haven't. I will though and fairly soon. This is a right ring, Republican state that is run by old money & good ol boys as we JUST became a state in 1912. I do think the I can take you or leave you attitude is the way to go. All of this fodder is going into my book so it was all good for something. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/10/2007 12:44:29 AM | show profile You go, Italy. I too live in the backwoods of American journalism, althought my freelance work takes me far afield. Alas, some of us are unable to go east or west, and must say,as the old sampler idiom did, East, West, home's best. And isn't it nice how everything becomes fodder for the books! I want that T-shirt -- you know, the one that says "Be nice to me or i'll put you in my novel." |
| candylilacs | Posted – 7/10/2007 2:35:42 AM | show profile Nope, California. Lived on the East Coast briefly, hated the weather (the classist thing didn't help either.) You could move to Los Angeles. The opportunities are better but I can't say they are any more high-paying than where you are, relatively speaking. But you will get in the greatest shape of your life while you are there. I miss that about L.A., how everything revolved around doing something active. (Hey, want to go to the gym? Yoga? Let's have a smoothie and walk two miles to the bookstore. OK, we found a parking space on this unlit street, it's only eight blocks to the club. Let's go!) Oh, man, am I nostalgic! Love the Bay Area but totally different vibe. I wish more people washed their hair. ------ http://www.mswritesguide.blogspot.com |
| Lizard Breath | Posted – 7/10/2007 10:16:13 AM | show profile This seems to be an east coast phenomena, even outside of journalism. I just moved to the east coast from the midwest and I feel like I have reverted back to high school, when aloof was cool. People are not going out of their way to be rude, they just won't go out of their way to be anything toward me. At a July 4 party my boyfriend and I had to listen to a half hour of straight jokes about how we must have gone cow tipping and play in the corn (I am from Chicago and he is from Kansas City, both places are much larger and more urbanized than where we are living now). And I can't help but notice in job interviews, even for non journalism positions, the tone when they say, "Oh, that is a state school," as if I just printed my own diploma on my home printer. No offense to east coasties, it is just very different. People loved my outgoing personality and manners in the midwest, but it seems to come off as desperate to people here. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 7/11/2007 10:23:40 AM | show profile LizardBreath, I'm a bona fide east coaster (NY then DC) and many of my friends are from the midwest, mostly Wisconsin and Ohio. Why? Because you're all so friendly and warm. Although, in DC, anyone who is not shooting at you is considered friendly and warm! (Lemme tellya, NY has nothing on DC in terms of pretentious, rude, self-important idjuts. That's why I'm getting out of here and going home.) |
| jazzprincess77 | Posted – 7/15/2007 9:46:50 AM | show profile so called 'minority' candidates hmmm...mailbag, did they tell you they were only hiring "non-white males" or did you just make that assumption because they didn't hire you? it's funny to me how when people talk about "so called 'minority' candidates" getting jobs, they always assume those candidates are unqualified. (and when i say "funny" I mean "makes me want to gouge my eyes out.") |
| jazzprincess77 | Posted – 7/15/2007 9:57:50 AM | show profile back to the topic at hand would you rather have "jaded" employees or the glad handing brown-noser types? i think it's a toss up... |
| Vox-o | Posted – 7/15/2007 10:30:36 AM | show profile It is very interesting, mailbag I have never heard a successful person complain that discriminatory hiring practices have stalled his career; only failures pinpoint this as the cause of career woes. It doesn't matter if it is a black person complaining HR bypassed him because they are prejudiced against people of color, or a white person complaining that HR bypassed him because of affirmative action-based bias against white men. (The same can be said of the men vs women complaint.) I only hear these excuses from losers, never people of success. I suspect it is because successful people look at themselves and dwell on becoming a stronger candidate, and losers dwell on blaming society. Bias exists in one degree or another for everyone. Mailbag, you have been griping that your career stalled because you are a white male for a couple of years now. It is time to let it go and and work on bettering yourself. There are women out there who are more talented than you. There are minorities out there who are more talented than you. There isn't a person on this board who can't be bested by somebody else out there. When it happens, you can either make up an easy excuse to make yourself feel better (race, nepotism etc) or you can get your ass in gear and improve yourself. |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/15/2007 2:06:59 PM | show profile | email poster vox Vox-o, I'll bite... in my book it takes more guts to call a spade a spade and stand by an issue no matter how unpopular, or what the greater of the whole says or thinks. I've have the e-mails from Newsday and another paper which I will not name publicly (the exec at that paper strongly condemned Newsday's practice btw) to prove my point. I applied at Newsday true - but I was not qualified and really didn't want to move to LI anyway. I have no issue with that. Had the job been a business writer, rather than sports, I'd certainly have been qualified and would have wondered whether race or qualification made the difference. That last sentence is the gripe. When an organization actively hires based upon race, that is not pointing to the weaker of the two being a loser. "Vox-o I have never heard a successful person complain that discriminatory hiring practices have stalled his career; only failures pinpoint this as the cause of career woes." I might agree with that... But remember this - I'm an asshole. A total complete asshole who points fingers and lifts the skirts of this society and this profession to see what pubic hairs show inside. To this - I will never be 'successful' as you put it... but in my view I am. You show me one thread here where I have said I'm not successful. I've got a good job Vox. My rant is for those few here who don't have one. Been there, done that, it stinks. I feel their pain, whether or not they even hold the talent to be involved in this industry. |
