Screw J-School: Transom Seeks College No-Gos, Drop-Outs for Digital Apprenticeships

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:14:34 -0400

This week's New Yorker allows Mark Singer to take us to the 40th death-iversary of the New York Herald Tribune. The oldsters met "the other night" in their old offices, which are now taken up by the journalism grad school of the City University of New York. Old/new world speeches were made:

Another speaker was Richard Wald, the Trib's last managing editor, who observed that the school "will try to do a lot of things that you can't do anymore. You can't do an apprenticeship at a newspaper anymore. You've got to go to school."

Well, screw that noise! The Daily Transom—who didn't go to no frickin' college, much less no filthy j-school—would like to hereby throw open its digital pages to those young reporters who find themselves unable or unwilling to take part in the ludicrously expensive and/or ludicrously time-wasting and ultimately intensely stupid system called "higher learning."

(Does anyone else remember when diversity was supposed to cover more ground than just ethnicity? Even The New York Times at least made an effort to encompass sexual orientation in its plans—and then immediately, after the preamble, dropped that idea from its report on newsroom diversity.)

College drop-outs and never-applieds are invited to pitch or send, for consideration, stories to The Daily Transom at csicha@observer.com. Written is fine; if not, a good pitch—since you don't have no prof to tell you—is about three sentences long, contains the nugget of news obtained or sought, shows flair, and has nothing to do with any of the following:

· Celebrity poker
· Food-eating competitions
· Ryan Adams
· MisShapes
· Janice Dickinson
· Stunt karaoke
· The Museum of Sex
· Speed-dating
· "9/11"
· MySpace
· A strange coincidence.

Email any questions. Proof of non-attendance is required. Pay is somewhere between "a pittance" and "sure better than a day's work digging ditches." Opportunities for advancement not un-possible.
— Choire Sicha

Observer » Richard Wald

Screw J-School: Transom Seeks College No-Gos, Drop-Outs for Digital Apprenticeships