elephantjournal.com Editor Job Description.

Still interested after reading below? Email [email protected] asap, as in now, present moment, with “Editor“ in the subject bar.

Too much, too soon? Consider joining our training program: Apprentices.

We are primarily looking for one editor who lives in (not near, we’re hoping to minimize driving) Boulder, Colorado. (Knowledge and passion for eco, green, adventure demographics a plus.)

There are 3 nerdy typos hidden. Find them and let us know and you get brownie points.

Applicants should have meticulous organizational skills, follow-through, communication skills combined with independence and a respect for deadlines. Are you a nerd? Horribly irritated by bad grammar, ALL CAPS, “its” when “it’s” is intended? Good. Applicants should be familiar with elephantjournal.com and/or personally passionate about “the mindful life” …green, yoga, adventure, politics, family, education, arts, equality and our other areas of focus.

Our mission, should you choose to accept it: “to spread the good word about the mindful life beyond the choir and to those who didn’t know they gave a care.”

Your work will be mostly virtual—we work through skype, google+, gmail, facebook daily.

Editorial duties include editing, working with our columnists and new writers, running our apprentice training program (we have dozens of apprentices around the world), sharing elephantjournal.com articles across our many social media channels (we have various active facebook pages & @elephantjournal has been voted best for #green content on Twitter two years running), communicating with our small team and bringing in new ideas and consistent, quality, accessible writers.  Experience with journalism ethics, editorial experience, understanding of wordpress and social media a welcome bonus.

The position is 15-20 hours a week to start, full-time gradually if you like, with a minimum commitment of two years including a trial period (for two weeks you feel us out, we feel you out, if not working we part ways, no harm, no foul). Schedule needs to be flexible. One mandatory editorial meeting a week with our team, one mandatory training meeting a week with our apprentices, as well as flexibility to work nights, weekends or days.

Creative writing or news coverage is not required, but we welcome your independent contributions.

We have fun and laugh a lot, but we also take our work seriously. We are not here to work with one-foot-outers. We are humble and eager about what we’re willing to do (from top, down). We are personally inspired. If not a self-starter, fast learner, dumb-question-asker-at-least-at-first, probably not a good job for you. If you flake when things get tough, please don’t apply. If you might quit because you don’t like us or your job anymore, please don’t apply. If you’re stubborn, cheerful, constructive, passionate… well, we’re a small company and more about empowering than rules and order.

Pay is $14/hour to start ($12 for the two-week trial period), plus perks (free yoga, massage, gratis access to exclusive/pricey events, conferences, programs, if you cover them) if in Boulder, plus bonuses based on our monthly goals we decide together.

You also have the opportunity to work with Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis, which puts on monthly live events in Boulder and produces live and virtual video interviews hosted on our youtube channel. You can also assist our weekly mailing parties.

Email editorial [at] elephantjournal [dot] com with a resume and funny cover letter explaining why you’re not wasting our time.

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More:

We’re dedicated to sharing the good life beyond the choir, and to all those who didn’t yet know they give a care about living a good, fun life that’s good for others, and our planet. The mindful life is about yoga, organics, sustainability, conscious consumerism, enlightened education, the contemplative arts, adventure, bicycling, family…everything. But mostly it’s about this present moment, right here, right now, and how we can best be of benefit, and have a good time doing so.

Elephant has been around for 11 years. We started off as a magazine. But after going national in Whole Foods and such, we wanted to further “green” our ways (we were already printed on state-of-the-art ecopaper). Thing is, the bigger you get as a magazine, the fewer copies, percentage-wise, you sell. We were unwilling to join all the other magazines in selling only three out of 10, and wasting the rest (magazines get milled, printed, bounded, shipped from China typically [we were US], shipped another five times…it’s incredibly wasteful after all of that to waste seven out of 10 copies, which can’t even really be recycled—getting inks out of magazine paper is super energy-intensive).

And because we were independent, and indie media is another raison d’etre, another value of ours, we couldn’t get the investment we needed to create our own distribution system, which is a tough wheel to reinvent.

So, we went online. We’re still independent, and we’re getting rid of direct ads, so our editorial (unlike just about everything else you and I read) is fully independent. Because the world needs honesty, and urgently. One of our heroes, Lester Brown, told me that the key to saving the world would be media. Education. Communication. He told me that seven years ago, and said we had very little time, then.

So join us. Sign up for a free 10 day reading trial. If you don’t like us, cancel. If you do like us, join the elephant community. Know that we’re not about being right (there’s stuff you and I will read that we’ll hate), but rather about respectful dialogue, and grassroots responsibility. So leave thoughtful comments for those who you disagree with. And, write if so inspired. Join the cause.

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