Surf for Great Food Web Sites
June 3, 2016 2:18 PM
I'm helping out with a ground-breaking, high-visibility project run by a well-regarded food writer. We need help with some narrowly-specialized research, along with some light writing. Here's the gist:
1. Surf around and find particularly great English language web sites/pages about cuisines ("Chilean", "Laotian", etc) or specific topics within a cuisine ("Thai Curry", "Japanese Nostalgia Food", "Brazilian Rodizio Dos and Don'ts", "Photo Encyclopedias of German Wursts"). Cooking video sites, recipe sites, cuisine overview or encyclopedia sites, everything is fair game....but you must ferret passionately for absolute treasure, rather than easy Google search results (i.e. "good enough" isn't good enough). The urge to ferret and filter should be a natural, happy-making drive for you that won't flag over time.
2. Be flexible enough to accept loads of feedback until you're fully calibrated with the sort of thing we're looking for. ENJOY being calibrated in this way.
3. Describe the sites tersely but persuasively, in the voice with which you might text message a friend. I.e. passionately explain why it's great and worth surfing in a natural, non-writerly voice that doesn't sound like some cubicle worker who's churning these out day after day.
4. Know enough about cuisine (from eating and/or cooking and/or traveling) that you can gauge savvy and authenticity and disregard pandering sites, e.g. ones that call kimchi "spicy pickled cabbage", or swap in trashy supermarket ingredients, or that feature well-intentioned home cooks who just aren't really very good. Also: distinguish quick-buck sites where content's aggregated via algorithm rather than meticulous human filtration.
5. Be able to work for several months, in your spare time, self-paced and unstructured yet actually produce, via unflagging determination. Retain sufficient innocent treasure-hunting joy that you never drop your standards, and always describe things with genuine passion.
If this "sounds like fun", it will be. But it will also be serious work. If you're someone who has trouble reconciling "fun" and "discipline", this work will wear you down. If you can produce over long haul, this project will be something you'll be very proud to have been proud of (and a fine resume credit). You'll also learn a massive amount about world cuisine. But, again, it requires disciplined and sustained work without a lot of structure.
payscale: Per negotiation.
job type: part-time
1. Surf around and find particularly great English language web sites/pages about cuisines ("Chilean", "Laotian", etc) or specific topics within a cuisine ("Thai Curry", "Japanese Nostalgia Food", "Brazilian Rodizio Dos and Don'ts", "Photo Encyclopedias of German Wursts"). Cooking video sites, recipe sites, cuisine overview or encyclopedia sites, everything is fair game....but you must ferret passionately for absolute treasure, rather than easy Google search results (i.e. "good enough" isn't good enough). The urge to ferret and filter should be a natural, happy-making drive for you that won't flag over time.
2. Be flexible enough to accept loads of feedback until you're fully calibrated with the sort of thing we're looking for. ENJOY being calibrated in this way.
3. Describe the sites tersely but persuasively, in the voice with which you might text message a friend. I.e. passionately explain why it's great and worth surfing in a natural, non-writerly voice that doesn't sound like some cubicle worker who's churning these out day after day.
4. Know enough about cuisine (from eating and/or cooking and/or traveling) that you can gauge savvy and authenticity and disregard pandering sites, e.g. ones that call kimchi "spicy pickled cabbage", or swap in trashy supermarket ingredients, or that feature well-intentioned home cooks who just aren't really very good. Also: distinguish quick-buck sites where content's aggregated via algorithm rather than meticulous human filtration.
5. Be able to work for several months, in your spare time, self-paced and unstructured yet actually produce, via unflagging determination. Retain sufficient innocent treasure-hunting joy that you never drop your standards, and always describe things with genuine passion.
If this "sounds like fun", it will be. But it will also be serious work. If you're someone who has trouble reconciling "fun" and "discipline", this work will wear you down. If you can produce over long haul, this project will be something you'll be very proud to have been proud of (and a fine resume credit). You'll also learn a massive amount about world cuisine. But, again, it requires disciplined and sustained work without a lot of structure.
payscale: Per negotiation.
job type: part-time
This job has been filled.