By Stanley Bing, who knows about these things. MediaBistro is on this like white on lunchtime at Michael's, with two excerpts from 100 Bullshit Jobs and How to Get Them, the new book by the Snidely Whiplash of business journalism.
Here's an example from the main excerpt:
Book Editor
Take breakfast meeting with writers, assign ideas generated by others, hound writers for manuscripts, have lunch, hound writers for manuscripts, have drinks and dinner. Repeat as necessary.
$$: $16,000-$450,000, depending. The lower you are paid, the less bullshit your job is; conversely, the more you make, the more access you have to the highest, rocket-grade bullshit imaginable.
B: 15-104. What a range! Entry-level editors must rewrite and proofread manuscripts (like this one instance for), and field angry phone calls from authors and agents so that their bosses can talk to other people with bullshit jobs (see Best-Selling Author).
Skills Required: There are still some book editors around who actually mark up manuscripts, but the truly successful ones wouldn't risk inkstains on their Armani cuffs. The great ones operate in pure ideas and conjecture—like which to order for lunch at Michael's, the sweetbreads or the Cobb salad? Occasionally, they will weigh into the process by barking, "Where's my book?" The great book editor is at once a gifted salesperson, an arbiter of taste, a babysitter of lost souls, and a closet boulevardier. God bless them, both of them.
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft. —H.G. Wells Duties: Ability to "read" a 300-page book before lunch, while answering emails on his Blackberry.
Famous Example: Maxwell Perkins, a towering figure of the 1920s and '30s, whose aggressive yet thoughtful shaping of the great modern authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolf, hewed solid monuments of literature out of flaccit, egotistical lumps of prose. The fact that Maxwell Perkins existed has made it possible for generations of book editors who came after him to feel good about their profession.
How to Get It: Take a job for no money upon graduating from an Ivy League school; live at your parents' house for three years until you make a living wage; then inherit a best-selling exercise book from an editor who's left for a better bullshit job.
The Upside: Meet Oprah.
The Downside: You are seated with James Frey and Nan Talese at the PEN dinner.
The Dark Side: Must eat at Elaine's.
Where You Go From Here: Elaine's.
Man, how perfect is the fact that I'm listening to the Easy Listening version of Mellow Yellow, and about to hear A Hard Day's Night by the immortal Miss Peggy Lee! I love On The Rocks, it's a great, cheesy album, and there is no pleasure to match the pleasure derived from instigating a conga line to Rootin' Tootin' Wayne Newton's version of Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes. None.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Here's a slice from Bing's piece on bullshit media jobs (I know it's redundant; look, I'm not his editor, okay?).
Blogger
Bad money, but if you're nasty enough [check], lots of power[…]. Try to establish yourself assomeone qualified to rattle on for screen after screen with no reporting involved [done like dinnah!]. Several years ago, when I was writing for Esquire, I determined very early on that those who had to report on their subject 1) took a long time to do it, 2) had to talk to a lot of people they wouldn't normally be interested in, and 3) worked too hard for their money [dayum straight]. Consequently, I determined pretty much from the get-go to do nothing but spin out a fine blend of hostility, speculation and wind as long as a publisher would let me [perfect, now can I have your publisher?]. I'd like to think that was an early adopter of the zeitgeist that now runs much of the Internet that matters [yes you were. now can I have a reference, bitch?].
The Grinch Drinking Game is quite simple. Watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and take a drink every time they say "Hoo." Since they say it eighteen times in the theme song and they sing the theme song three times in the show, no-one has ever made it all the way through or if they did they do not remember.
Over the past couple of days (actually since the World Cup madness began, with the ceremonial flight of the hair gel) the blog has been hit by 500% more comments than it has ever received before, the vast majority being brief expressions of gratitude for what an "inform site" I have. I thank you all, and for the sake of brevity have condensed the 40 latest comments below.
raincoaster 