An Offer You Shouldn't Refuse

Walker Spaight (aka Mark Wallace) has just posted about an opening for Managing Editor of the Second Life Herald. A worthwhile opportunity for those with an interest in virtual worlds who want to begin understanding the future of journalism in these spaces. Oh, and the pay is lousy. What more could you ask for?

"The job description is much the same as it was a year ago: Basic idea is to average a story a day. Editor would be free to build a staff of freelance reporters (easier said than done). Starting pay is around US$100 a month, which would also have to cover pay to stringers you bring on board. Uri will continue in his role as Editor Emeritus, I will continue as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. The new hire would be the Managing Editor, responsible for most of the day-to-day operation of the Herald. If you can get the paper to generate more income, then we rethink your salary accordingly.

"We average around 1,000 unique IP hits per day, and several thousand page views. Despite the growth of SL media, the Herald remains the Grid's only real representative of a watchdog press. It's our job to get under the skin of those who run the world (or who would like to), and uncover the goings-on that don't get reported about elsewhere. This doesn't mean just sex and drama, but also interesting people, events and builds, new updates to the software, and, importantly, slapping a critical eye on all things Second Life and not being afraid to call it like we see it. That's our mandate; unfortunately, we haven't been fulfilling it all that well lately, and we could use a little help."

Comments

[Maria loves pictures]

1.

Yes, I agree with you this is a great offer. The salAry might be a bit to low for this fantastic job.

2.

We average around 1,000 unique IP hits per day, and several thousand page views.

Isn't that sorta... small for an active, dedicated game blog? 1k hits per day for the premier news site on a game that claims 100k active users? I'm thinkin' somebody is fudging the numbers, and I don't think the SL Herald is lowballing their readership...

But I am impressed that TerraNova managed to cover something even smaller than A Tale in the Desert. Great dedication to examining the driving forces behind virtual worlds. I'm sure you guys will figure out what makes these worlds fun one of these days.

Seriously, am I right in thinking that TerraNova itself has easily 50 to 100 times more daily unique IP hits than the SLH? Is there any reason we should really care what 1,000 people are reading daily, and maybe 10,000 people are playing? Does the SLH really represent anything more than a rounding error in the vast scheme of virtual worlds?

[illovich]

3.

I don't think the pay is low, really. It's basically a job for a fan/hobbyist who would do it anyway -- and it doesn't look like the Herald is run by Second Life, so it's basically a fan job.

My understanding is that even folks working at allakazams were working part-time and on a volunteer basis. I think the video game fan site job market is a bit tighter than one might think at first. =P

[Edward Castronova]

4.

Since you asked, I checked. We have 2.4m hits since inception, averaging 3000-4000 daily. 3700 so far today, 25,000 overt he past seven days.

[Matt Mihaly]

5.

What about people grabbing your RSS feeds? Does that boost those stats some?

--matt

[m]

6.

>RSS feeds
By Alexa
SLH has reach/million of ~4-5/m
TN about 45-55/m

7.

OMG who cares about this drivel! Seriously, the fact that the TN writers gleefully jump on the SL powered press and marketing machine makes me want to come here less and less.

SL touts that they have 200,000+ members, but in reality there are only about 12,000 hard core active members with no more than 6000 logged in during their busiest hours. Therefore it makes sense that SLH would have maybe around 4,000 unique hits a month. Hardly worth writing about.

Would love to see more postings about where, SL, PE, ATITD, There.com, etc will take their virtual worlds over the next 5 to 10 years.

[Chip Hinshaw]

8.

The job they describe is not a hobby. It's full-time and probably then some (I used to do it in the real world). They won't come close to achieving the little bit they describe above at $100/month (unless they find some raving SL fanpeep to do it ... which I'm sure is exactly what they're counting on). I mean, journalist pay in RL is lousy ... but not THAT lousy.

Good luck, though -- it would be really neat to see "virtual" journalism done right (for a change).