She definitely works hard for her money!Somewhere along the line every journalist will have a job as a factchecker (along with a number of other jobs including waiter, bartender and coffee jockey). When I first moved to Toronto I did this for free for three months as an intern at eye Magazine. An experience that had me sifting through City Hall minutes online but also calling up sex stores to ask whether vibrators used AA or AAA batteries. All and all a very enlightening experience. Fortunately this previous fact-checking experience, and a lot of dumb luck landed me a contract position as a checker with Style at Home magazine.
Now fact-checking isn't a glamourous job, but it is necessary. Don't believe me? Well if the New York Times had fact-checkers and a magical device that can slow time in their office so that they could actually find the hours in the day to fact-check they could've found out that they had a rat-faced liar among them. The New Republic got screwed by Stephen Glass despite having fact-checkers, which is truly mind-boggling. Oh and one can't forget how a bunch of bloggers made Dan Rather look really silly.
Needless to say, the job is good so far. I've only been doing it for five hours and already I know far far too much about ovens and fridges. Compare this with "Reluctant Metrosexual" Peter Hyman's experiences in fact-checking at Vanity Fair. His description of the Conde Nast offices almost make me regret the fact that I work from home. And who knows, maybe this job will lead me to bigger and better things?
On a completely different note the nominations for the 2005 Bloggies are up (well sorta, I had trouble getting to the site...)! If you can get there check them out. Gothamist, the momma site of Torontoist is in the running for a category.
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