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Raquel has a job as a reporter


salex

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It am a bit angry as well. I have an English/Writing degree and seven months post college I have been unable to land a job. That Raquel got a job without any writing classes and a homeschool GED education as a reporter for a newspaper and even more infuriating is that she never had to do an actual interview to get the job and they just hired her on the spot. And there are so many like me. I bet she had a relative high up who got her this job because I do not believe it otherwise.

The part about the relative, is a huge possibility since she lives in a small town. The editor might have asked her about her family and he might have known her parents or someone else related to her. LaLee also brought up good points about the dying newspaper industry and business models. Those aspects probably played a part in hiring Raquel. She probably isn't making much money working for this paper.

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Roughly 30 years ago, my mom was a "stringer" for a newspaper in a larger town a few miles away. She wrote community news about our small town and hand delivered copy weekly in those pre internet days. For this she earned a newspaper subscription and little if anything else. My mom would have been humiliated to submit her short weekly column with any of the errors Raquel includes in her articles. Her editor would have found a replacement if her work had been this shoddy.

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This former English/Journalism major (BA) and past reporter, copywriter, editor, magazine writer, tech writer and proofreader thinks that she's a WONDERFUL writer. Not.

Every other sentence uses "to be" verbs or the passive voice (two huge "no nos" in news writing).

I discovered I do this a lot when I started running blog posts through a grammar checker. Do you have any good links about this stuff that would help me understand it and correct it?

I get what passive voice is (thanks to the nag on the grammar checker), but not really how to avoid it in my writing :(

I realize I can google this, but thought you may have resources handy.

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You guys, Raquel's (hideously bad) articles are the three most popular on the site, and somehow I don't think the local readers have much to do with it. Maybe we should start using donotlink or something so that the paper doesn't get the mistaken impression that her work is popular?

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I discovered I do this a lot when I started running blog posts through a grammar checker. Do you have any good links about this stuff that would help me understand it and correct it?

I get what passive voice is (thanks to the nag on the grammar checker), but not really how to avoid it in my writing :(

I realize I can google this, but thought you may have resources handy.

http://writingcommons.org/collaborate/c ... o-be-verbs

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/572/04/

It is something that takes practice.

Not using "to be" verbs takes practice.

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You guys, Raquel's (hideously bad) articles are the three most popular on the site, and somehow I don't think the local readers have much to do with it. Maybe we should start using donotlink or something so that the paper doesn't get the mistaken impression that her work is popular?

Or we could stop breaking the links so the big-wig editors can see where all the traffic is coming from. :twisted:

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Or we could stop breaking the links so the big-wig editors can see where all the traffic is coming from. :twisted:

Brilliant! :evil-laugh:

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Ye gods. I just skimmed the first article linked and that is TERRIBLE. When I was 14, I got a work experience job at our small town, weekly paper. I got a couple credits for school and they got someone to do a lot of tedious little jobs and they didn't have to pay me. They also let me have a column reporting on events happening at the school. Even at 14, I would have been mortified to write that badly. I mean, my columns were definitely not the epitome of journalism and the ones I still have copies of make me cringe a bit, but so much better than that dreck. And I was writing about really, really boring stuff.

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Or we could stop breaking the links so the big-wig editors can see where all the traffic is coming from. :twisted:

They are bound to notice an increase in their traffic and find us. When they do, I hope they realize they need to start watching Raquel closely because it is just a matter of time before she plagiarizes something. The woman thinks she copy other people's words for Pinterest to pass of as her own and we were just silly to think that it is wrong.

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They are bound to notice an increase in their traffic and find us. When they do, I hope they realize they need to start watching Raquel closely because it is just a matter of time before she plagiarizes something. The woman thinks she copy other people's words for Pinterest to pass of as her own and we were just silly to think that it is wrong.

Or, since I am feeling particularly ebil today, WE wait and watch for her to plagiarize and then send in indignant letters to the editor... :stir-pot:

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From her Instagram, where she posted a picture of her little brother kissing her cheek. Can we count the grammatical errors? And can we take note that she said "when I get home from work" like she's been doing it longer than a few days? Also, "chuck full of blessings"?

"I wish there was a way Josiah could always stay this little. I wish I could promise him that I'll always be able to pick him up when he comes running to me when I get home from work. I wish there was a way that I could know he would never get tired of hugging and kissing me. I wish I could capture every little moment in which he says or does something that makes me so thankful I am his big sister. But all I can do is live everyday loving him like crazy and not let a moment go to waste. Cherish the precious years of tender ages. They pass too quickly. Josiah was an answer to many years of prayers. And I am so awed by his little heart, and his mind-blowing curiosity. No, it isn't his birthday or anything. Today is just an ordinary day chuck full of blessings, and he is most definitely one of them."

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I looked at the site and so far, I only see one new article credited to Raquel. It was brief article about a chiropractor setting up practice in town. There are other articles that look like staff reports and a few others are credited to other reporters. There is an article about property vales and the county assessor in that area and it was written by someone else. My bet is that Raquel probably won't be assigned any stories involving county or town government. I think her assignments are mostly going to be articles about community people and certain events.

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It's good to know this paper has a reporter not afraid to talk the tough issues, like a Young Living essential oils seminar given by someone, surprisingly, with the last name Duarte!

http://www.thechiefnews.com/news_briefs ... 5f915.html

We have a local paper that comes out once a week and is about 1/2 classified ads for livestock and 1/2 crap about local meetings and seminars. It seriously has a column about the goings on at local nursing homes. It always makes me think of Sarah Maxwell when I read about the special presentations these elderly folk are forced to sit through (death, come quickly!).

I wonder how many pages this paper contains each day if a monthly subscription is under 4 bucks.

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