Housekeeping: Are You TTAC's Next Top News Contributor?

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

As you saw last week, our news chief Steph Willems left the daily news grind behind to pursue an opportunity outside of automotive journalism. That leaves us looking for our next news guru.

We’re in need of someone who can write 3-5 blog posts a day while editing and scheduling the rest of our daily content. We need a person who can write factually accurate, engaging, clean copy that is free of typos and grammatical errors and also write engaging, factually accurate headlines. The ideal candidate should likewise be a sharp-eyed copy editor.

Our ideal candidate would have a strong familiarity with all aspects of the automotive industry, including but not limited to: new product, classic cars, regulatory, business/finance/sales, supplier, manufacturing, technology, and the aftermarket. He or she will be able to quickly gather news and write copy that goes far beyond parroting the press release. Familiarity with TTAC’s unique voice will be immensely helpful.

This is a contract position that will be paid monthly. Compensation will be commensurate with experience, and this position is not eligible for benefits. This position will be remote, open to anyone living in the United States or Canada. That means you’ll need a reliable laptop and Internet connection. The hours will be early morning to afternoon, Eastern time. Some night and weekend work will be required.

While this is primarily a news gathering/writing/editing position, there may be opportunities to attend media launches and auto-show media days (once the pandemic ends and launches and auto shows resume) and/or to review cars loaned to you.

Other duties will include monitoring and moderating comments, working with our contributors on editing and scheduling, and some very basic photo editing and shooting skills. The ideal candidate will have no major blemishes on his/her driving record.

Qualities that are preferred but not required would be social-media savviness and being comfortable with speaking on a possible future TTAC podcast or in video segments.

If you’re interested, please send your resume, a brief introductory note (no need for the formality of a cover letter, but we’d like to know a bit about you and your background/experience) and 3-5 sample clips to thealey@thetruthaboutcars.com with the subject “News Contributor”. It’s OK if your clips are journalistic in nature but cover a different industry. We’d prefer published clips, but samples are OK if you don’t have any.

The deadline for applying is 5 pm Central time, Monday, September 21. We expect a high volume of applications, so we will only be able to respond to those we plan on interviewing.

If you have questions, email me or comment below.

[Image: Bartek Zyczynski/Shutterstock.com]

Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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  • Tele Vision Tele Vision on Sep 09, 2020

    Dream gig but for two issues: 1) I don't have the time, and 2) Once bitten, twice shy. To wit: I wrote copy for a few companies a few years ago. It started with landing page stuff ( 'The Future Is Always Happening!' and assorted brilliances... ) and progressed to S.E.O. by way of fleshing out some blogs on a regular basis. N.D.A.s and threats about working for anyone else followed. The best/worst part was that my contact at one company, Traci-with-an-i in H.R. or whatever she did there, instantly became my editor. She'd send my copy back peppered with examples of 'you know' and 'It's like' and enough exclamation marks to leave a potential customer breathless. I am in no way intimating that the editors of this august publication would be the same as Traci was, mind. Damn you, Traci.

  • Art Vandelay Art Vandelay on Sep 09, 2020

    Maybe Bertel Schmidt will come back

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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