TalkAndroid is Looking for News Authors

by Chris Moor

Help Wanted

Do you have an interest in Android phones, tablets, apps, accessories and every & anything else Android related? Do you find yourself spending hours a day reading news sites and blogs? Would you like to write for TalkAndroid? Now is your chance! We are looking for responsible, talented and driven people to join our incredible team.

Now we’re not just looking for anybody with a keyboard, there are a few requirements:

Must be able to contribute to the news on a regular basis. This means 3 or more posts per day.
Be proficient in the English language. Non-US people are welcome to apply, as long as you have a firm grasp of the language.
Must have the ability to summarize articles from other sources in your own words.
Must have the ability to take some criticism. Your writing won’t appeal to everyone, that’s a fact. It shouldn’t bother you if somebody leaves a negative comment. Our editorial team is always there to support our authors!
Finally, it will definitely help if you have an Android device and a passion for anything Android-related wouldn’t hurt either

To start, the Author position is volunteer based – at first. You start as a contributor, and you move to an author once your writing hits the point of being able to be put out without a lot of editing. This non-paid period generally lasts only a week. After that, as long as you are meeting the minimum requirement of articles, you’re in the money!

Any and all articles you post to TalkAndroid become property of TalkAndroid and may not be posted anywhere else without prior authorization from our editorial team.

Interested canidates should Contact Us with NEWS AUTHOR in the subject line. Please include your full name, short bio on yourself & experience (or link to your resume), and we will contact you back.

We look forward to your applications!

» See more articles by Chris Moor

Categorized as Android News

Comments

Dustin

So, I’m trying to get an email in through the Contact link, and every time I try to send it says “Error: No Verification Code Generated”. Yes, I’m putting in the verification code every time, and I’ve tried it on Chrome, IE and Firefox. Any ideas here?
Scott Young

Well thats odd, I tested it before I posted the article. Anyway, for now just send an email to jobs.talk.android AT gmail DOT com

Sorry about that
Dustin

No problem, Scott. I’ll send it now… I’ve got the email address, so if you want to counter the inevitable influx of spam crawlers by taking down that comment, feel free.

Thanks so much!
Jack Kemp

Scott deserves spam – don’t sweat it.
Dariuas

Scott;
I sent you an email a few days back at Bosco’s suggestion. I also got the same error above as Dustin said.
LM

There can’t possibly be any English speaeking people outside of the US, can there?

I wonder what the national language of Canada, UK, South Africa, Australia, NZ are? In fact, now that I think of it English comes from England.

How very strange.
Scott Young

There is a difference between being able to properly speak it and being able to properly write it.

Broken English does not qualify

We already have an Editor from the UK: Jack Kemp and we have one bonafied Irishmen on his trial period, Glenn Howard. So I think I know that English extends beyond America.
Sowhat

Just so I get this right, what would be my motivation for doing this as an unpaid job?

No misunderstanding here, I have a job and am happy with it, and my writing is pretty bad. But just out of interest, why would people do this?

Enlighten me please
Scott Young

Some people are very passionate about mobile technology and Android. They actively follow many sites and enjoy reading and keeping up with the latest updates and news regarding those two topics. A lot of those people even tweet or post on facebook about news in this area.

Thus, when an opportunity arises to actually write for one of the websites that they actively read and follow, they jump at the chance.

Hopefully that answered your question.
Charlene

I just an email letting you know I’m interested.
gavin

Is there an age limit?
Vishwas Saxena

I am interested in applying for the post. I will be sending an email to the above mentioned email address.
willwgp

I’d sign up if I didn’t already have a job
http://www.examiner.com/x-61700-Hartford-Smartphones-Examiner Charles W.

The voluntary (unpaid) position isn’t the problem with me. The problem is all the control demands you have:

1. NO CONTROL OVER THE CONTENT YOU POST– without prior authorization.

2. Selected applicants will be placed on a week-long “supervisory” period? So even if you send articles or post displaying your writing style and ability and happen to make “the list” you still have to prove yourself in a week long probationary period?

As a professional writer myself this seems like a lot to endure for an unpaid position, just my opinion.
http://www.examiner.com/x-61700-Hartford-Smartphones-Examiner Charles W.

No disrespect
http://mydroidlife.com Kerry Garrison

I actually would like to write for talkandroid.com but what I don’t like about this and other sites is that they all rehash the same news, the steal over people’s copyrighted images (even blatantly with other people’s watermarks still on them). That’s a job almost a monkey can handle. What I want to see from different sites is UNIQUE content, talk about different apps and tell us why or why not we would want them, how to use obscure features of our devices, things like that, I don’t need to see the exact same post on 15 websites.
Scott Young

@ Charles
1. “Any and all articles you post to TalkAndroid become property of TalkAndroid and may not be posted anywhere else without prior authorization.” Honestly what site isn’t like this? Do you think Gizmodo let’s their authors publish the same articles on other sites? Do you think Engadget writer’s are allowed to do this? I sure don’t. This is merely to protect our content. None of the other Android sites would like if their authors were also publishing the exact same content here

2. The supervisory period serves three purposes. One, to make sure you get the hang of posting with our system (WordPress). Making sure you link to sources correctly, add post tags, categories etc etc. Two, to make sure you can actually contribute to the site. If I bring you onto the team and you barely post anything in your week, things aren’t going to work out. Three, spelling and grammar. With the two sample articles, people have plenty of time to spell check and proof read their articles to death. Posting on the site is a different story. We don’t have time to proofread our news editors’ articles, so we have to trust that they can do it themselves.

Lastly, the week doesn’t last for everyone. If it’s been 3 days, and you’ve posted numerous times and there isn’t anything wrong with your articles, I’ll let you loose and you can start publishing on your own.
Scott Young

@Kerry 90% of the internet is rehashed news, lol. Not everyone visits the same sites. This is unfortunate, but necessary. There have been numerous times we’ve been the first ones to “break” an article and then other sites pick up on it, but when we grab the news directly from a manufacturers website or twitter, it’s just as easy for another site to see where we got it from and go their, and then post that same news on their site (meanwhile not linking to us as the source)

As for the “stealing images” whenever we use an image with a watermark, we link to that website as the source of the article, hence giving them credit for the image. Stealing the image would mean trying to photoshop out their watermark, trying to crop out their watermark, all in an effort to call an image our own. If we tried to paste our watermark over someone elses, THAT would be stealing. (and stupid)

As for the unique articles, perhaps you haven’t seen all of our new guides? http://www.talkandroid.com/guides/ Or our top5 articles?
http://www.talkandroid.com/7831-5-apps-useful-for-system-and-network-administrators/
http://www.talkandroid.com/8805-top-5-android-rss-readers/
http://www.talkandroid.com/8351-the-top-media-players-apps-for-android-a-talkandroid-search/ < -- the actual media player article should be out soon
http://www.talkandroid.com/6126-top-5-medical-apps-for-android/
http://www.talkandroid.com/3878-these-5-android-apps-will-make-you-the-life-of-any-party/

I won’t bother linking to our phone reviews or numerous app reviews, but you get the idea

Feel free to send in your credentials if you still want to write for us.

Oh, and @ Charles W, initially the position is volunteer, but if you consistently are publishing news or writing unique articles, you’ll make some $$
http://mydroidlife.com Kerry

Have to disagree with you here. If you take an image from someone else’s website (watermark or not) and you use it on your site (regardless of linking to original source) it is a direct violation of the digital millennium copyright act of 1999. The DMCA is a Federal Law that strictly prohibits using someone else’s content. Technically speaking, even taking images and content from a manufacturer’s website is a breach of the DMCA but no manufacturer would file charges for a blog site that is helping to promote their products.

I do really like this site BECAUSE of its original content but it does irk me when I see text and images that have been simply ripped from other sites. The legal way to do that is to write a paragraph about the article and link to the original source.

Asking for multiple people to all write multiple posts per day will only encourage taking the worst of the news blurbs and posting them. I would much rather see ONE good post per WEEK from someone that I would find useful versus being able to go to http://android.alltop.com and seeing the exact same headlines on every site listed there.
http://www.examiner.com/x-61700-Hartford-Smartphones-Examiner Charles W.

@Scott I’ll give you point number two because all of the points you’ve made are very legitimate and I can’t really argue with the logic . But when it comes to point number one, I believe you sort of made my point. All the sites you have listed are paying their writers, so they have the right to demand ownership of the content that is produced by each writer.

I will say contrary to popular belief there are blogs offering the writers ownership of their content (especially if it’s non-paid and voluntary).

So in closing, I guess if you were compensating the writer of your choosing then by all means content should be yours but if your not paying then you shouldn’t be entitled to it (just my opinion). But this should and will be a good position for some young kid starting out as writer– which is a good thing at the end of the day.
http://nextparadigms.com Lucian Armasu

Since this is non-compensatory, it’s only fair you at least allow an author byline with link back to author’s site. If so, I may be interested.

I think the biggest reason someone would want to write for free for a site like yours is if they can improve their own site’s visibility and their own personal brand, and even for a small amount of traffic kind of like guest blogging.

These would be enough to get someone not only to write for free for your site, but also do their best to write for your site, since its their brand at stake.

At least, that’s how I would do it
NemOry

I hope I qualify, I really love the job to be given. Im an Android Addict! haha
http://www.google.com/profiles/vkelman Off-topic: a mobile-friendly format?

Sorry for off-topic, but if your site is dedicated to Android, isn’t it a must for it to be friendly for mobile [Android] browsers? I saw other sites (based on WordPress if I’m not mistaken) which automatically open in Android-friendly mobile view detecting that user is on a cellphone browser. Your sitter doesn’t do it. It’s a pity.
abdul

After greeting I buyer Mobile from Acer and I use OS Arab Middle East Arab regime investigation now being conducted from the company Android, we hope that you will reply on the subject (Is there any program Android Middle East)
han

hi: andoid

when i buy sonyericsson x10 but with out voice dialer, Command, i ask sonyericsson the proublem. they tell me is andoid the proublem isn’t them proublem, but how kind i to voice dialer, Command on my bluetooth. can you guy help me out.

please,
help
han
Troy

I think Han should skip the probationary period, his english is amazing!
Guest

I have 2 say that you keep switching writers too quickly. Like the past five writers I’ve seen, they have been great, but then they just stopped writing.
Craig

I was wondering if you do get selected to write paid articles how much will you get per article?
Dustin Karnes

@Craig: It’s not a set amount per article, but we make it worth your time.
Craig

@Dustin
The reason why I’m asking is I just found out a few days ago I might be losing my job as a vet tech soon and when I use to write news articles for another site they only paid $4 per article and you can only write a max of a 100 articles. Back then that was all good and all because I wasn’t to worry about my main job but now that I am I’m looking around for a mixture or a single job that I can work at that could help me support myself until I find a new main job.
http://TheTrendaholic.com Charles West

@Dustin are you guys paying for positions now?
RTWright

My personal take on this is that I believe in Quality over Quantity. There were some earlier post here about having the steep need to have 2 to 3 posts made a day. Well while that seems like a good idea it’s not really. So I would say your better off getting as many GOOD writers as you can, let them take their time and write News Worthy posts that are unique from all other sources and informative as well as entertaining.

Since everyone has a different writing style, you should be able to get quite an abundance of articles of great quality out of a solid group of writers. I do love this site, I come here daily and read everything you have. If I do miss a day I go back and read all that I missed and catch up to current posts. I like this site better than most of the others so this is my main Android site for updates and news.
brenty18(as seen on twitter)

well was planning to apply but…when i read of so much people applying..no way. most likely more better for the job. from the twin island Republic trinidad&tobago(live in trinidad) and i speak english pretty well its just that we trini’s have a twist to it we write standard english.full name:Roland brent fortune. but not fortune enough to get the job.
http://timmyjohnboy.com Tim

I’m going to have to agree with Lucian and say that some sort of byline is a must. I’ve blogged on my own site, timmyjohnboy.com, for quite some time and every guest author I have I allow a byline and a link or two.

I also used to be a staff writer for MakeUseOf.com and even though they compensated very well, the authors still got a byline and link.

As for those who question the wisdom of writing for free, IF you have the ability to promote your brand or blog in a byline, the visibility, shared audience, link juice and the building of authority is all worth it. Being paid could be seen as a perk, especially for just quickly reporting news.

*thinking about applying but we’ll see;)
stephany

I love the android system i like to know new things about the android like new droid apss how do new things about the phones
http://jo.com jo

5 times out of 4, comments are more interesting than articles. That’s over 100%.
http://www.engiguide.com ajay patel

Hi
first of all i like your this blog very much .. and i want to say thanks…

I have question about android developer future ?
how much demand ll in marker of android developer ?
How much approx revenue can got form market ?
change language

how can i change language for samsung galaxy s i9000
http://Talkandroid alvin

Hi any 1 can help ?!
i m new in Android 2.1 tablets 10 inch
i have face some eror during use gallary to open some picture the eror will show “system Message Need reboot into Full-HD Mode “?
once i press Ok !then restart again n the message comeout again !
so what should i do ? anyone can help
http://none justin

omg lol you guys this is not a tech forum go google how to fix the problems;)
Sheena

I am really interested in trying out for this position unpaid or not. I could use the experience and I really do love most things about Android and tech news in general. Too bad I don’t have much to show for in terms of a resume or sample writing. I’m a college student and my course demands for technical writing rather than journalistic.
Stacy Bruce

Hey guys… I’m ready when you are!
Dustin. Did you receive my submission?
http://www.cashsellfast.com bank routing no

*Would you be interested in exchanging links?
Nahuel Castrilli

I’ll do it for free, just for the community and TalkAndroid.
http://gadgetcube.blogspot.com/ Andrew Shacker

I have applied for the job via email – thank you for this opportunity!
http://www.upfx.com xhstevrox1

Interesting point of view, thanks for taking the time to write about it!
http://privacy.com Guest

I have to agree with Charles.

I am a blogger with three different site’s, i own my own media site and run my own business that is android related. And for legal reason i will not mention any name’s but i will tell you it does not work like he posted.

When you write your article the Tech site pays you for rights to use that work and you grant them the permission to use it. And also they have the right to post it where ever they want because they hold a release agreement. But you will always hold copy right because you wrote the article not them.

It does not work the other way around in where the site automatically owns the work because it does not matter how much they want to claim ownership the did not write it and no agreement you sign will protect them in court from you using your work that you may legally sell to five site’e if you want to…

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