Examiner.com Thoughts?

The problem with the "credibility" argument is the site is chock full of loons who write outrageous stuff that ends up getting linked to sites with wider readership.

 

Quoted for emphasis and truth.

I recall posting about my experience with examiner.com before, but am too lazy to look for the post. The long and short of it: No editing standards and no benefit to being a better writer than the copy-paste hacks. We can discuss the plagiarism on the site, too.

Or maybe I was just the asshole who shared his interviews with pro players, only to generate about $0.80 per day. Unless you write about the Raiders, boxing, or MMA, you'll have a tough time scratching together $25/month for one of their payouts.

Also, I hate the fact that my resume is on careerbuilder.com and I keep receiving emails from them about their Examiner openings in my city.

You're better off with a blog and some Google AdSense.

 

I just wish the job sites would contract their listings to ONE, which says "Writers wanted: Examiner.com"

Instead, you will have 24 "jobs you mght be interested in", and 22 of them are from examiner.com.

 

I joined Examiner.com because I saw legitimate journalists that I knew as some of their national and local examiners and thought it might actually be worthwhile. People like Matt Steinmetz, who certainly didn't need "credibility" from Examiner.

He had a big following before Examiner as he did on Warriors broadcasts and later left for Fanhouse. I tried a million times to tell them that having 200 legitimate examiners and actually paying them a regular wage and then adding a bonus on top of that for page views would establish much more credibility than having 20,000 examiners write about crap and only make a few dollars a week.

Bob is absolutely right, you are much better with your own blog and Google Adsense. But this is the new model for citizen journalism - get people to write for free and base their wage on a BS page view formula or in the case of Bleacher Report - not only write for free but also have actual newspaper websites use their information and stories as if they are beat reporters. A most disturbing trend that needs to be killed. To wit, on this link about halfway down on the right side. LA Times partner Bleacher Report, which is above the Times' actually columnists. http://www.latimes.com/sports/

I have asked reporters at my paper if they would write a blog or get a salary based solely on pageviews and they have all said hell no.

I guess I was lucky enough all these years to actually get a wage from my employer for reporting rather than having to rely on pageviews based on keywords in a headline.

 

There are advantages to working for Examiner.com, although I've never done so. Some of the "Examiners" get season press credentials for the pro or college teams they cover, and that helps them build their freelance business. For some, it's a lucrative tradeoff.

 

Here's a perfect example of what is wrong with Examiner.com and perhaps "citizen journalism" in general. What a sad state if this type of media is the future of journalism.

http://www.examiner.com/x-53074-Social-Media-Examiner~y2010m7d12-Cleveland-Cavaliers-owner-Dan-Gilbert-blasts-Jesse-Jackson-on-Twitter

 

Yes, because no one in the mainstream media has been fooled by a fake Twitter feed.

 

All one had to do was read the feed to see it was a joke. This "reporter" thought it was Gilbert's twitter and wrote his blog as such.

I'd be very interested in any links you have where a similar thing happened in the "mainstream media," and even more interested in what happened to a "mainstream media" reporter who made such a mistake.

 

There have been some recently - perhaps covered here - that unfortunately I can't reel off the top of my head, but here was a big one:
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100628/newsflash-steve-jobs-still-not-using-twitter/

My point wasn't that The Examiner is the future, but that don't label an entire group on one article. There are a lot of shitty "real" reporters, too.

 

I brought this topic back up because I was curious if anyone has any better luck with examiner in the past six or so months. I've been thinking about going this direction to get some clips by covering local state u. The press credential isn't the issue because I have a pretty good relationship with the sports info guys. I also thought the blog thing with google adsense but I have no idea how adsense works or anything.

I'm not really looking at it for the money aspect, but for of a way to improve my clip file. Would writing for something like examiner be better than having my own blog when it comes to applying for future jobs or is frowned upon? Thoughts?

 

Little Hurt: I would create my own blog. You can only get clips (and some money) out of Examiner. With your own blog, you can learn some of the new media aspects of the job (blogging, promoting your work, etc.) You can also show an editor that you made a website along with your clips. Good luck.

 

Either way you're going to come across one of the biggest issues when it comes to making a name for yourself: the stigma of your affiliation.

Whether it's earned or not, a lot of people look down on those who write for Examiner (though the idea that you could get a credential and do actual work out of it is better than 95 percent of the blow-hards who watch a game on TV and write four basic paragraphs out of it). And people will also wonder how Tim Smith from Tim's Sports Blog got a credential to the game and if the university will credential just about anyone these days.

The lesser of two evils would be to do it yourself, because at least that way, you'll be able to learn how to use blogging software and, if you market it, will have that going for you as well. Just be careful about editing, because nobody's going to be proofreading your stuff.

And unless you're going to be doing some kind of big-time, hardcore investigative enterprise pieces, it might not matter much anyway. Once you can write a gamer, you can write a gamer. Try to look beyond that and consider it a long-term job interview and write about things beyond that first layer.