Sparks flew this week when USA Today publisher Gannett listed a job as a ‘Taylor Swift reporter’… following it up with another to cover Beyoncé.
Elon Musk’s ‘X’ lit up with the post, one noting that last year @Gannett laid off “at least 600 ppl and stopped filling 400 jobs”, with people having to wait “almost two months for their severance, which btw was capped at 26 years”.
But hey, it’s TayTay, and even GXpress has found an excuse over the years to feature her image on our front cover (when a conference speaker mentioned her outstanding commitment to what’s best described as “customer service”).
Speaking at WAN-Ifra’s Digital Media Asia event in Hong Kong in 2015, Straits Times digital editor Eugene Leow spoke of the “understanding of audience” which had made the singer the most adored of her generation. We thought that a hook worthy of a GX cover.
The Gannett gig – described by The Guardian as “a Taylor Swift fan’s wildest dream” – is with its USA Today and The Tennessean, the group’s Nashville masthead, as is the one reporting on Knowles-Carter, better known as Beyoncé.
Pay at between US$21.63 and US$50.87 an hour (A$33.61-79.09) isn’t going to be the major attraction so much as that of being paid to focus on the singers… and some travel on the side.
“Seeing both the facts and the fury, the Taylor Swift reporter will identify why the pop star’s influence only expands, what her fanbase stands for in pop culture, and the effect she has across the music and business worlds,” the advertisement says.
A spokesperson told NiemanLab Gannett had hired 225 journalists since March and is “actively recruiting” for more than 100 open roles. Writer Sarah Scire added that, “even with this new hire you could say Gannett is leaving a…blank space where local news used to be”.