Update: The Escapist Needs Newsies!

[Grayston245]

Welp, I submitted mine earlier. I would've gotten around to it sooner, but I was slightly (read: completely) distracted by Victoria Day weekend customers at my IRL job...and by an English patch of the WON-DER-SWAN edition of The Final Fantasy Legend.

...What? It's a great game! xD

And to top it off, I read through my news post a few times to check for errors, and found three of them that all happened because I transferred from Microsoft Word to a GMail message. WYSIWYG, huh? I'm not so sure...

Anyway, good luck to all the participants, and to the editors that will be reading these. Whether or not I hear back from you guys, I have a few neat article ideas that I may share from time to time through your Article Submissions program. ^^;

 

[Susan Arendt]

Thanks to everyone who applied, and for the record, formatting issues will not count against you - it's your words that count, not whether or not you used an M-dash correctly. We'll be in touch with those who made it to the next round in the next week or two.

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

 

[Fappy]

Thanks to everyone who applied, and for the record, formatting issues will not count against you - it's your words that count, not whether or not you used an M-dash correctly. We'll be in touch with those who made it to the next round in the next week or two.

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

And quite embarrassing.

Did you see that?

That was me dying inside.

 

[Mumorpuger]

Thanks to everyone who applied, and for the record, formatting issues will not count against you - it's your words that count, not whether or not you used an M-dash correctly. We'll be in touch with those who made it to the next round in the next week or two.

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

Out of curiosity, how many people are you accepting?

 

[Susan Arendt]

Thanks to everyone who applied, and for the record, formatting issues will not count against you - it's your words that count, not whether or not you used an M-dash correctly. We'll be in touch with those who made it to the next round in the next week or two.

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

Out of curiosity, how many people are you accepting?

7-10, probably. A lot depends on the applications we received.

 

[kitsuta]

Out of curiosity, how many people are you accepting?

7-10, probably. A lot depends on the applications we received.

Holy wow that is a lot of new newsies. Yet still a >0.03% chance for any one applicant.

Ouch.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Thanks to everyone who applied, and for the record, formatting issues will not count against you - it's your words that count, not whether or not you used an M-dash correctly. We'll be in touch with those who made it to the next round in the next week or two.

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

Awww, really?

I didn't name check, but that's only because I wasn't expecting the article to trick me. I thought the name was wrong for the purpose of the article, you know how fake articles may change the names of products or people etc, just so people know it's fake?

I knew I should have asked.

I'm sad now...

 

[Mr. Omega]

or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

and there go my chances...

Well, better luck next time.

 

[AngelOfBlueRoses]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

Hell to the yes! I saw that in the article and I'm like "I'm... pretty sure that's not how you spell Reggie's name..."

So I think my chances just got upped now! ^^

 

[MostUncivilised]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

That seems hardly fair, don't subeditors usually correct spelling errors in finalised version of an article? Are our applications automatically going to be rejected because of this regardless of the content and other research included?

 

[Susan Arendt]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

That seems hardly fair, don't subeditors usually correct spelling errors in finalised version of an article? Are our applications automatically going to be rejected because of this regardless of the content and other research included?

No, we do not have a staff of people following along cleaning up news posts as they're written. That's the responsibility of the news writer. Typos will inevitably happen over the course of the job, but if you didn't check the spelling of the President of Nintendo's name, that's a serious error. If you didn't follow instructions despite being told that applicants who failed to follow instructions wouldn't be considered, that doesn't speak well of your attention to detail.

When applying for a job, it behooves you to try your hardest and do your best.

 

[Newsy]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

That seems hardly fair, don't subeditors usually correct spelling errors in finalised version of an article? Are our applications automatically going to be rejected because of this regardless of the content and other research included?

No, we do not have a staff of people following along cleaning up news posts as they're written. That's the responsibility of the news writer. Typos will inevitably happen over the course of the job, but if you didn't check the spelling of the President of Nintendo's name, that's a serious error. If you didn't follow instructions despite being told that applicants who failed to follow instructions wouldn't be considered, that doesn't speak well of your attention to detail.

When applying for a job, it behooves you to try your hardest and do your best.

I find this quite disturbing and wrong. Many trust this site and would not have expected you to purposely trick them like that. If it was a real life article/situation that was set out then people would have of course researched into this themselves and verified information. As this was not and technically a fictional/set up piece then there was highly the chance that people would not verify due to the fact that it was fictional.

As I said, I am seriously disturbed you did this and I haven't even entered an article for this (I'm terrible at writing).

Your second point is "2) Below, you'll find a totally fake news story as reported by the totally fake gaming site, GameXtreme.com. Using the new-found wisdom you recently gained during step one, read it over, and rewrite it as a news post appropriate for publication on the Escapist." Why would you expect people to verify a completely fictional piece?

 

[Baldr]

Well crap I'm out of the running. The one of two things I copy and pasted the name straight from the article, did a lot of other research though.

Just so use to seeing that name, that it never occurred to me there was a sleight spelling mistake.

I even went to GameXtreme.com and looked up to see if was a real game site in the past and if their was any previous owners.

 

[AngelOfBlueRoses]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

That seems hardly fair, don't subeditors usually correct spelling errors in finalised version of an article? Are our applications automatically going to be rejected because of this regardless of the content and other research included?

No, we do not have a staff of people following along cleaning up news posts as they're written. That's the responsibility of the news writer. Typos will inevitably happen over the course of the job, but if you didn't check the spelling of the President of Nintendo's name, that's a serious error. If you didn't follow instructions despite being told that applicants who failed to follow instructions wouldn't be considered, that doesn't speak well of your attention to detail.

When applying for a job, it behooves you to try your hardest and do your best.

I find this quite disturbing and wrong. Many trust this site and would not have expected you to purposely trick them like that. If it was a real life article/situation that was set out then people would have of course researched into this themselves and verified information. As this was not and technically a fictional/set up piece then there was highly the chance that people would not verify due to the fact that it was fictional.

As I said, I am seriously disturbed you did this and I haven't even entered an article for this (I'm terrible at writing).

Your second point is "2) Below, you'll find a totally fake news story as reported by the totally fake gaming site, GameXtreme.com. Using the new-found wisdom you recently gained during step one, read it over, and rewrite it as a news post appropriate for publication on the Escapist." Why would you expect people to verify a completely fictional piece?

The only fake thing in the article is the product that's being talked about. Everything else is real. Angry Birds is real. Pokemon is real. The iPhone is real. The Android is real. Nintendo is real, and so is their American COO, Reggie Fils-Aime.

Despite being a fake article from a fake gaming site, the idea of the re-write was to treat it as real. You were supposed to treat it as though you already had the job, and that includes verifying information as simple as a name that can be just as easy as looking at Google or past articles.

The point of this was to treat it as though it WAS real.

 

[Newsy]

I still find it incredibly wrong to refuse certain applications that are good because of one small mistake that you gave to them. There are some brilliant writers out there, some of them not knowing that you have no sub-editors (as other companies/groups have different practises you must admit that). I hope you don't go writing off brilliant journalists simply because they are used to another kind of practise, I think it would certainly be a loss for the escapist magazine.

 

[Susan Arendt]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

That seems hardly fair, don't subeditors usually correct spelling errors in finalised version of an article? Are our applications automatically going to be rejected because of this regardless of the content and other research included?

No, we do not have a staff of people following along cleaning up news posts as they're written. That's the responsibility of the news writer. Typos will inevitably happen over the course of the job, but if you didn't check the spelling of the President of Nintendo's name, that's a serious error. If you didn't follow instructions despite being told that applicants who failed to follow instructions wouldn't be considered, that doesn't speak well of your attention to detail.

When applying for a job, it behooves you to try your hardest and do your best.

I find this quite disturbing and wrong. Many trust this site and would not have expected you to purposely trick them like that. If it was a real life article/situation that was set out then people would have of course researched into this themselves and verified information. As this was not and technically a fictional/set up piece then there was highly the chance that people would not verify due to the fact that it was fictional.

As I said, I am seriously disturbed you did this and I haven't even entered an article for this (I'm terrible at writing).

Your second point is "2) Below, you'll find a totally fake news story as reported by the totally fake gaming site, GameXtreme.com. Using the new-found wisdom you recently gained during step one, read it over, and rewrite it as a news post appropriate for publication on the Escapist." Why would you expect people to verify a completely fictional piece?

I would expect people to verify the spelling of someone's name, the spelling of a game title, or any other number of key pieces of information. Many people noticed the error, but thought it was meant to imply the "fakeness" of the article, and commented as much in their application. That's fine by me. If the overall post was good, not catching the name wouldn't be enough to ruin someone's chances. But it's a big red flag.

 

[kitsuta]

The first half of this thread is people complaining that the news writers at The Escapist aren't careful enough when fact-checking.

Now people are complaining that they were expected to fact check.

I think I just hit my irony quota for the month.

 

[Baldr]

Well put it this way, there are thousands of video game websites out there and wanna-be game journalists/writers. The Escapist is one of the top websites, I wouldn't expect anything less than to have the best and sharpest writers out there.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

To those who didn't follow instructions (as you were told to do), or who failed to check for the correct spelling of Reggie's name...well, that's a shame.

That seems hardly fair, don't subeditors usually correct spelling errors in finalised version of an article? Are our applications automatically going to be rejected because of this regardless of the content and other research included?

No, we do not have a staff of people following along cleaning up news posts as they're written. That's the responsibility of the news writer. Typos will inevitably happen over the course of the job, but if you didn't check the spelling of the President of Nintendo's name, that's a serious error. If you didn't follow instructions despite being told that applicants who failed to follow instructions wouldn't be considered, that doesn't speak well of your attention to detail.

When applying for a job, it behooves you to try your hardest and do your best.

I find this quite disturbing and wrong. Many trust this site and would not have expected you to purposely trick them like that. If it was a real life article/situation that was set out then people would have of course researched into this themselves and verified information. As this was not and technically a fictional/set up piece then there was highly the chance that people would not verify due to the fact that it was fictional.

As I said, I am seriously disturbed you did this and I haven't even entered an article for this (I'm terrible at writing).

Your second point is "2) Below, you'll find a totally fake news story as reported by the totally fake gaming site, GameXtreme.com. Using the new-found wisdom you recently gained during step one, read it over, and rewrite it as a news post appropriate for publication on the Escapist." Why would you expect people to verify a completely fictional piece?

I would expect people to verify the spelling of someone's name, the spelling of a game title, or any other number of key pieces of information. Many people noticed the error, but thought it was meant to imply the "fakeness" of the article, and commented as much in their application. That's fine by me. If the overall post was good, not catching the name wouldn't be enough to ruin someone's chances. But it's a big red flag.

That's good to know.

It was a stupid mistake on my part, and something I should have verified.

I'm just glad it hasn't completely ruined my application, because writing for the escapist would be a dream job for me.

I really love it here