How?!

[mommaduck]

Please tell me how this woman got hired as a so-called journalist? Are they this desperate?

 

http://www.examiner.com/entry-level-careers-in-st-louis/st-louis-mo-tops-most-dangerous-city

 

Misspelled: "spokesperson" (TWICE), "completely" (TWICE), "mayor's" (did not even use an apostrophe to show the possessive and also misspelled TWICE), "conference", "reviewing", "statement"

 

Second to last paragraph is a run on sentence without correct punctuation.

 

"Women in Small Business" (if proper name of a group) or "women in small business" (capitalization issue).

 

"Small businesses HAVE" (not has) or "Small business has"

 

Punctuation issue in last sentence.

 

 

 

I was looking for an article on this issue. However, this one just caused me to wince constantly.

[Mary in VA]

Wow that was appalling! But it should make you feel better to know she wasn't "hired as a journalist." Here is her bio from the site,

 

"XXXXX, a freelance writer, career research analyst ,business owner. A regular contributor to eHow.com for the past year. She's a wife and mother of three children. She regularly posts job opportunities and free educational links on Facebook, Twitter, Iseecolor and MySpace as "Link My Biz." XXXXXX's background is in liberal arts and social science. Shes(sic) the owner of XXXXXX Hair Affair Salon In XXXXX."

 

So it looks like she is just a member of the public posting on the internet. ETA: I looked at her list of articles. It could be she is being paid as a "freelance writer" by businesses, but writing is certainly not her career.

 

Mary

Edited November 22, 2010 by Mary in VA

[mommaduck]

Educational links? Oy! From having lived and gone to school in that area, I have to say that I'm willing to cut her slack in that their system over there is TERRIBLE (enough to cause nightmares). However, I thought she was hired and that is what astounded me. Good to hear that this is just an honest, self employed attempt. It's still sad.

[BarbecueMom]

I don't know what's more disturbing... the fact that she copied word for word whole paragraphs of the Associated Press article, or the fact that the copied paragraphs had spelling errors in them.

 

I'm sure there will be more articles in the next few days, but they'll just be a rehash of the defense put up from previous years. The same stuff gets blamed every year, like bad public schools, city not merged with county, ineffective police department, racism, white flight... and so forth.

 

That would have made a much more interesting article than, "Crime is high, get your free government muney today!"

[scmama]

There's multiple misspellings and grammar errors in all of her work. She also doesn't know the difference between their and there. There must not be anyone editing the online papers!!

[TXMomof4]

Present is also misspelled. Yikes. THat was very painful to read.

 

ETA: I just read more of her articles and they are all bad. Someone at that organization needs to either hire her her own editor or get her out! Yowza!

[Rivka]

examiner.com isn't a real news organization. Anyone can sign up with them to write articles, and get paid based on the number of hits and ad clicks. They don't really care about the quality as long as they get the ad clicks.

 

I often see examiner.com writers pop up in forums and mailing lists, plugging their articles. They're trying to drive up their hit counts.

[melissel]

Ah-HA! That explains it! I've been seeing this site pop up in posts on our local HSing loop, and I wondered why. Now I know. Thank you for posting that!

[mommaduck]

examiner.com isn't a real news organization. Anyone can sign up with them to write articles, and get paid based on the number of hits and ad clicks. They don't really care about the quality as long as they get the ad clicks.

 

I often see examiner.com writers pop up in forums and mailing lists, plugging their articles. They're trying to drive up their hit counts.

Thank you for that information. I know the St L. area has several small "local" papers and, since this had popped up close to the top of a Google search, thought it was a new one I had not seen before.