Twentysomething lands managing editor gig at The New Yorker

Today I learned that a 26-year-old woman landed a managing editor gig at The New Yorker. Amelia Lester, an Australia native, graduated from Harvard and began at The New Yorker as a fact checker. She left to edit for the Paris Review. Now she’s back and the envy of, um, well, me at least.

Things may not be perfect in the media world right now, but God damn it, if we’re not hopeful and we don’t at least try to make things work, well then we deserve our plight, now don’t we?

An anonymous contributor published this heart-breaking piece on Gawker today. It really got me down. I may not be an official member of the media in my current position, but my title includes the word “editor” in it and I’m going to jump on the first opportunity I find to get back into the writing game. Or at least that’s been my plan as of late. I thought that as a recent journalism graduate I was in one of the worst positions possible amidst the media meltdown.

There I was, a rookie ball player waiting on the bench and so ready to finally get my first chance step up to the plate. I made the cut got placed into the line-up, and by some grace of God I got a hit and ran my little heart out, slid into second base and MADE IT. Then some old fart who followed me in the lineup hit a grounder to third base and I was tagged out. Cut from the game.

The other rookies and I never even got our chance! Yet Gawker’s quoting a guy in his early 30s working for a glossy Conde Naste publication who said, “All these young kids still wet from college complaining about the lack of media jobs—at least they’re young enough to figure something else out. It’s the guys like me, who’ve been doing this shit for a decade and don’t know how to do anything else, who are fucked.”

You know what I have to say to this bitter old man? First of all, If you’re gonna call me a young kid “wet from college” I won’t hesitate to call you old. Second, STFU. Srsly. You want my job? I’ll teach you how to do something else.

Here’s what a “friend” says of Ms. Lester: “she got this far the old fashioned way — hard work and smarts.” Hopefully with enough motivation and journalistic prowess all of us “wet from college” (what does that even mean?) can slowly but surely replace all the whiny old farts.

Your ≠ You’re

Found a new exciting Web site today called MuckRack.com.

What if you could get tomorrow’s newspaper today?

Now you sorta can, by tracking the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets.

Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting.

If you are a journalist on Twitter or know of anyone not yet included in Muck Rack, please let us know.

I was so close to signing up. And I probably will. But in the process of signing up a big, glaring YOUR stared me in the face.

TYPE “SELF” IF YOUR ADDING YOURSELF!?! Please, I beg of you, fix this spelling error, MuckRack.com! A site representing journalists that made a your/you’re error? Not OK.