I'm not sure how helpful this article really is .... as a journalist, i'll tell you what press releases are very often used for: trashcan filler, or deskfiller to make it look like you've got too much work on your hands (ok that last bit is a little bit of an exaggeration).
This is the most handy piece of info in there:
>>Finally, don’t hound the journalists. After your initial pitch, following up once or twice is fine—but any more than that and you’re approaching stalker territory. If you don’t hear anything after the first two calls, move on.
The right approach is to look at pitching a journalist as if you are looking to get hired by a company, and he/she is the hiring manager. Journos get shittons of press releases a day. You have to stand out head and shoulders above the crowd. And there has to be something /useful/ to the publication's readers about your product. You say you've got a great new e-pub app that will make it helpful to publish books electronically? That's not really that useful to readers .. there are tons of those around. What is /special/ about your product to a pub's readership? Find someone in the paper's coverage area who was a raging success story and who used your app/product. That'll be more likely to get a journo's attention.
The problem with your response is that both reasonableness and 'adding to a discussion' are subjective concepts. Another comment of mine adds nothing to the discussion, IMO, but has on the order of 7 upvotes. That is in the thread of comments poking fun at Zuckerberg as a sort of sith lord. None of those are particularly thought-out arguments on FB's respect for its users; they are simply snarky insults of the Zuck.
So, if snarky insults are reasonable and add to the discussion, then why is any one of these comments considered differently? (again, a rhetorical question. also, yes i put 'answer' instead of 'question' in the previous comment. my brain got ahead of my fingers. I'm sure you've never done that before, as you are clearly one of the world's top minds).
You just go to "submit," type in the title you'd like your post to have, then paste the link in the link field. Clicking up arrows gives karma, i believe. It also saves stories (if you go to your profile, you can click on 'saved stories' or something like that and see links you've saved)
So I hold an opinion and do have substantial intellectual abilities. Does that mean I must be erudite in every post? <-- rhetorical answer because the answer is an assumed "No."
And now other countries start doing the same as the US did 100 years ago. Soon they'll be outsourcing jobs too, though IDK to whom. Soon there won't be any cheap labor as the rest of the world catches up!!
Or maybe super poor countries will start being better off .... hmmm
That's slang for "This guy is off his god damn rocker." People like this who have such blatant disregard for proper procedure should be castigated into humiliation.
Well my point is not that everyone should be able to live off $18k a year. My point is that You don't need $500k a year to live decently. I have a new car, a good apartment and amenities such as cable TV and xbox live. Certainly geography plays a large role in individual costs. But again, I'm not trying to say everyone should live on $18k a year. I'm saying I (a single fellow btw) do, and it's a satisfactory lifestyle complete with all the necessities and a few luxuries.
Bullshit. I live on roughly $18k a year net. buy a house, maybe doubles or PERHAPS triples my housing allowance. Have a wife and kids and things, in total, probably triple.
I don't think people understand how to not waste money any more.
Wow. This interview is SPOT ON. So applicable to pretty much every industry. Thanks for posting. Worth resharing through other networks. Hopefully more people will read stuff like this that actually explains the hiring problems employers face.
I always laugh when people question why others make more than them. Standard salary for mid-level journalists is around $27k a year. Teachers are around $35k. I don't know about other careers, but there's always somebody making less than you.
I've seen SEVERAL times that "most programmers can't solve fizzbuzz." I did this after just a few months of learning python, on paper no less (Ok, i had one if/elif statement in the wrong spot. a quick run of the script in the command line showed me it didn't work how I thought it should and I fixed it).
But are there any DATA that corroborate this largely anecdotal statement? I figure, it has to be much less prevalent than these statements. (Or if it isn't, I better get my ass in gear and really learn to program so I can make the big bucks).
You put it so much better than I did.