If you fancy yourself some type of wordsmith, and you love yourself some automobiles, you should look into joining our team. Let’s cut to the chase:
- Pay is per post, and based on experience.
- Your work will be exposed to over 1 million viewers (and growing) per month.
- This isn’t a leisurely blog job. Like any serious news outlet, we have deadlines, and we aim to crank out as much as possible. As our tentative business motto goes: “KILL THEM WITH CONTENT! (tentative)”
- There’s always something to write about, so work is steady and can take up plenty of your day. But you don’t have to wear pants if you don’t want to. Or even leave the basement.
- You will be at the bleeding edge of automotive news. In fact, you are the news.
- You will gain affectionate and loyal fans, and sworn enemies. Like every hero, legend and dictator.
- All applications are kept confidential. A wink to all you defectors out there.
Work demands include:
- High availability during the mornings and afternoons, M-F and sometimes weekends. If you have other commitments, let us know. We could be able to work around it.
- You will need the endurance and pace to produce around 8 posts per day, with a word count of around 150-250 words, on average. Those days of writing an article every two days are over, so boss up. Besides, the more posts you can produce, the more money for you.
- Self-motivation. There’s no office, and there’s nobody looking over your shoulder, so you need to be able to work well that way.
Subject matter will include:
- Covering breaking automotive news, model reveals and press releases.
- Reporting on general car culture.
- Motorsports and all that implies.
- Automotive business news.
- Original content.
Aside from writing skills and automotive knowledge, the following traits are desired (not required):
- Managing social media pages outside of your own personal Twitter or Facebook page.
- DSLR photography skills.
- Race track/autocross/motorsports experience.
- Technical/engineering experience or background to accurately report on engines, chassis dynamics and the like.
- A business/finance background to help accurately report on the complexities of OEM stocks and market analysis.
- Motorcycle experience/endorsement.
- Commercial drivers licence endorsement.
- Automotive detailing knowledge/experience.
- Extensive “green” knowledge, such as batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.
- Recreational involvement in a particular car “scene.” Anything from tuned Hondas to off-roading in Jeeps.
We’re also accepting interns. So youths, if you need some experience in the field, don’t hesitate. Though if you have no interest in the auto industry, don’t bother. And we can tell if you’re faking.
For all those who are serious, please email either myself at gmauthority at motrolix dot com, and we’ll go from there.
Please include:
- At least three writing samples. As recent as possible.
- A cover letter on why you want to work with us, and why you’re a good fit for the team. Show us some spunk!
- Your resumé. A relevant one. We don’t want to hear about the time you were with a landscaping company in 2007.
- Any references you may have. Non-fictional.
Godspeed.
Comments
I’d wager there is some unexposed talent in these comment sections. Hope we see some of you step up to this offer.
And with mention of this, may I ask for a new revision to the blog feed, please. Might not be the correct terminology, but what I’m trying to say is:
-Some of the audience might be killed by the content. I would suggest that some of the best articles, the news-breakers, be posted proportionally larger than the rest (Ebay Finds, Wordless Wednesdays, Recalls, By The Numbers). These news-breakers would be centered on the screen, with the lesser posts organized adjacently around it. This would reduce scrolling through pages if an audience member were to miss a few days of GMA and preferred articles found faster!
-Along with the hiring, has the GMA team considered a position for “spell checker”? An assistant to the writers that would correct any misleading information, typos, sentence revisions, etc. I believe larger publications such as MotorTrend has some quality control; why not have our own?
Hopefully you don’t see this as critiquing of GMA’s quality, but all things can be improved. I tried to not be too verbose, but these are a few ideas of mine, a GMA veteran. Thank you for the consideration 🙂
I completely agree with you on the format change and get that spell checker, grammar thing taken care of. Something else nice would be an auto save type of thing that restores posts lost in sending, etc. The way it gets said the first time is usually the best and I hate it when for some reason the post gets dumped. Kudos to an otherwise fine site though.
Paid by the post….HMMMM.
That answers the lame post about all the auction cars and other useless topics that we pass over.
I think some of the posters here should write as they often are better in touch with what is going on than some of he reported stories. If anything they are more interesting more often than the actual news.
I agree some kind of a format change would be welcomed. Break this up into topics and sections where you can go to the type of story you really want to read and avoid any of the fluff that you have to pan through to get to it.
They also give a bonus to the stories that get more response. It would give a better incentive for better and more topical stories than the sometimes space fillers we have to leaf through.
I see this site as a good site with the ability to transform into a great site with a little work and adjustments. I know it is tough to continue to keep coming up with stories and info. But when doing a site like this you have to look outside the box and network out to make connections that pay off if info. It is not what you know so much as who you know. The two together can give one very good insight.
I hope you can pick up some good talent and continue to evolve.
If we were to incentivize high-traffic stories, we would have to change the name to “GM Truck Corvette Camaro Authority.”
The “useless topics,” as you call it, is part of automotive culture and is meant to celebrate something interesting, fun or desired. And if you can name another website that covers a single automaker on a daily basis as extensively as we do with General Motors, present it to me. I’ll wait.
Matt the useless stories get passed by are space fillers. If s story has no legs does it really need to be out there. Even Autoweek has a place they put the start of a press release that they never finished.
The point is if the story is really relevant than by all means post it but if you sit down and really look at some of the stories we get here from out perspective they are just more things we have to pass by to get to what means much.
By all means you repost many of the stories and press releases here for GM and kudos on that.
It is like talking. If you have something to say then say it. But if you are just going to bramble on then just keep it zipped. You get enough good repost stories to keep the visit rate but there are times you can tell you are really pressing the limits or relevance.
If a Yenko sells for $1M then post it or a rare GM car from a great collection is going on the market then do it. But some of these other just appear to be more filler or advertising if anything.
This has nothing to do with how extensive you are it is about quality vs. volume.
I commend you on what you get right but please take the criticism as constructive. No one is perfect.
And yes I know GM people read here. But then they also visit a lot of web sites and even post on many others too. It is good they watch but they do a lot of visiting anymore.
I appreciate what you’re saying, but I think if you understood the current climate of the internet and how stories circulate, or how exposure is attained, your perspective would be different. I’m not about to break it down here, but just because *you* or a group of others don’t want to read some of the content, doesn’t mean the same for many others.
Just know that we do everything with a purpose. And trust us that if there’s a GM story out there, we WILL report on it.
Source links. It’s nice to see where the story originated from rather then GMA serves as some kind of dump for industry news to flow in without anyway for users to see where the story came from.
Unless GMA is trying to stop out-traffic.
We link out to every single story we cover that was first reported on other outlets, often where the publication name is mentioned in the text body. It’s pretty spelled out, and its common for the rest of the automotive blogosphere to do so as well.
Might I suggest more articles based on opinion, and not just news? Something to get enthusiasts to use their brains a little more and get creative. Wasn’t it mentioned before that GM’s staff actually read some of the articles posted?
Yes. We love producing this content for you guys. We do it when we can.
Now If I only was a good writer. I have almost all the other qualifications.
In fact, I feel good.
Glad to hear it, cvcv.
I could do this job and most likely really like it, but . . . there’s no way I’m going to do writeups on propagandistic horse excrement like GM’s assertion that the 4.3L V-6 isn’t offered in the Colorado because the 3.6L V-6 is more fuel efficient.
Just couldn’t do it.
If I become a GM Authority European agent, do I get a Cadillac to freely use? 🙂