Wanted: Freelance facts

It's hard to know exactly what to make of an ad like this. What is it that fact writers do? And why do we need freelance ones -- to supplement the staff fact writers? Are the folks over in the politics section the fiction writers?


Or do you need "fact writers" around so you can give a story like this No. 3 play on your newspage with a straight face?


Makes it tough on a poor old copyediting blog. Every time we swear to stop talking about Fox and start talking about journalism again, Fox pulls something like this out of the old chapeau. But as graduation season draws near, it's good to know there are jobs out there for hungry young journalists.


As a rule, journalists are better off if they don't delude themselves into thinking they can write dialect effectively. This is a reminder that they probably shouldn't try to write about it, either.