Photo source: prettylittlebirdhouse.tumblr.com

Every four months, we take on a new trouble-making crew of would-be new media editors. Want to learn the craft, free? Apply to join elephant’s Apprenticeship Training Program. Hate typos? We want you. Like flaking? Flake off.

Still interested after reading below? Email [email protected] asap, as in now, present moment, with “Apprentice“ in the subject bar. Kinda interested? Don’t apply.

elephantjournal.com’s Apprenticeship Program.

Editing / New Media Ethics / Social Media

Does the idea of a Saturday night in sweating over words make your heart glad? Are you a stickler for punctuation? Do you condescend at emoticons and fear ALL CAPS?

Then we want you. Maybe.

Every four months, we work with a new crew of elephant readers and writers who are self-starters, inquisitive learners, open communicators, respect the written word and are viscerally inspired by elephant’s mission: bringing together all those working (and playing) to create enlightened society.

Work with a community of like-minded apprentices from all over the world, as well as elephant’s team of editors.

We’ll train the hell out of you and send you a calligraphed, eco-printed “Certificate of Editorial Apprenticeship,” as well as an eco-goodie bag upon completion of your four-month free* training program. *Deposit required.

Note: this is a free training program. We offer you our time and care. It’s fun, and there’s no “busy work” that is extraneous to our duty to train you in social media, new media, journalism ethics and blogging generally.

Having won numerous national awards (#1 in US on twitter, twice, for #green coverage, among many others), and with 2.4 million readers a month and counting, apprenticing with elephant is a nice feather in your career cap.

 ~

The Elephant Editorial Apprentice Certificate Training Program:

1. Your responsibilities include: selecting non-copyrighted photos, communicating with our editors and authors and editing and posting articles by the public in a timely manner via WordPress to elephantjournal.com.

2. You’ll be trained to share via social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and the like).

3. You’ll put together one original weekly blog post. Can be a share of a video, or an original poem, artwork, article.

4. You will take on one elephant journal focus area (Green, Adventure, Wellness, Enlightened Education, Ecofashion, Food, Bicycling, Politics, Culture etc.—we cover all aspects of the mindful life).

5. Your apprenticeship will be 10-15 hours a week with a commitment of four months (upon successful completion you can apply to continue as a paid Assistant Editor).

6. You will attend an optional (just kidding) one hour weekly meeting (time and day tk), which includes training, peer edits and random haranques by elephant founder Waylon Lewis about why not to use “you” or “very.”

7. We offer twice weekly optional (just kidding) live-training sessions.

8. Apprentices may be hired on, if you’re interested and we’re interested. That said, it’s highly unlikely.

9. We have fun and laugh a lot, but we also take our work seriously. We have a two strikes policy: if an article you are editing is late and then you miss a meeting without notifying us, etc, you’re out! We are not here to work with one-foot-in one-foot-outers.

10. To that end, if interested in joining our free training program, we require a US $100 refundable deposit. Deposit is lost (at our discretion) if at any time we do not feel our investment in you is worthwhile. That said, you can get 100% of this deposit back in the first two weeks of the program if you decide we’re not for you; or upon successful completion of our four-month program. We do not keep deposits unless you flake after the two weeks.

Still interested? Send your resume and a (brief) cover letter and resume explaining why you’d be a good fit to editorial [at] elephantjournal [dot] com. Fair warning: one typo and you’re out.

(If you don’t hear back from us, feel free to nag us. The best editors are pro naggers. That said, we do have limited spaces: if our team is full, we’d still be honored to invite you to contribute to elephant: elephantjournal.com/submit.)

Yours in the Vision of Enlightened Society,

The Editors.

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