Do you love to write and want to write about issues you’re passionate about? Want your writing to matter? Come work for us. Our clients hire us to share their work in education, social policy, urban issues with the rest of the world through smart communications online and off.

We’re looking for smart, curious writer/journalists to join the staff of a growing startup that focuses on social media and communications for research organizations, think tanks, foundations, and other nonprofits. Research, write, and code daily research-based blog posts under tight deadlines as well as occasional feature stories in the areas of education, social policy, and digital media and learning. Act as project manager, leading editorial calls with clients and managing several editorial calendars. Promote posts daily through social media (Twitter and Facebook). This position is perfect for a recent journalism graduate or early career writer who is interested in social justice issues and wants transform research into sharp prose. Must write with high degree of accuracy, objectivity, and nuance. Position can be a stepping stone to work in think tanks, science writing, or nonprofit communications.

We are looking for writers who want to be part of our team and grow with us. We will train the candidate in research reporting.

Duties include:

Qualifications:

Full-time. San Francisco Bay Area.

How to Apply: Send cover letter, resume, and three writing samples (links are fine) by August 15 to: info@hiredpeninc.com

The post We’re Hiring! appeared first on HiredPen Inc..

Well, first, because it’s where the exchange of ideas is happening. There is already a conversation taking place on social media about early childhood education, for example, and economic policy, and smart growth. Niche communities of researchers, policymakers, and the media have embraced these tools as ways to share ideas among like-minded colleagues.

“It became clear that ignoring the phenomenon wasn’t going to work,” MDRC’s communications director John Hutchins told Barbara last year. “We were already part of the conversation. People on Twitter and in the blogs were making us a part of the conversation and we weren’t even seeing it. We’ve realized it’s not a question of whether to get involved. It’s how.”

If you feel similarly, we can help. Over the past four years, we’ve been perfecting a model for blogging and social media that works for researchers. Instead of strong opinion, our posts are balanced and measured, yet still engaging. Most importantly, they contain smart information that people can use.

We take advantage of a news moment or a recent research release and use that to highlight your work. We break down your findings into language policymakers can use, and pull in other resources that fill out the context of the findings. The curatorial aspect of the blog—pulling together related content from around the web—means that readers come to rely on your blog as a valuable resource—a one-stop must-read.

And we stand out in another way: we aren’t afraid to dive in and read complex documents. In fact, we’re likely reading your research and publications already during our daily dive into the social policy landscape. We understand what terms like “randomized control” and “statistical significance” mean. And we know the difference between research and advocacy. We’re not afraid of nuance, and we understand the need to be objective.

At the Brookings Institution, for example, we’re working with Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone to expand the community and develop the conversation around their book, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.” Through weekly blog posts we help put their research and resources into the hands of the regional policymakers across the country who need it most.

A recent post on homelessness, for example, documented the extent of this widening problem and linked it to the growing poverty in the suburbs—the theme of the book. We then highlighted some solutions that Alan and Elizabeth offer in their book, and did some sleuthing online for similar examples to expand the discussion. Once the post was up, we tweeted it out several times over the course of a few days, mentioning all the people we featured so they could share it with their own networks, bringing new readers to the site.

Beyond blogging, we also continue to provide editing, writing, and other communications services. We recently redesigned our website, and asked our clients to brag about us in testimonials (not an easy ask for those of us who prefer to work behind the scenes). But what came back was really wonderful. Greg Duncan, an economist who was recently awarded the 2013 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for his work on the long-term effects of child poverty, had this to say about Barbara:

“I find her editorial instincts to be remarkable. She engages with the ideas, never taking liberties with the manuscript but at the same time she does not shy away from making suggestions for substantial changes.”

The writing and editing we do is different because of our unique set of skills. Let us engage with your ideas—the world needs them. We’d love to dig in. Get in touch here.

The post What Is a Research Blog? appeared first on HiredPen Inc..

I feel like everywhere I look these days I see more evidence of the pressure to create more content faster. Between articles, blog posts, tweets, books – even New Yorker writers are collapsing under the pressure of the sheer quantity of output we’re expecting.

And for those of you who aren’t writers, “feeding the beast” of your own online presence — timely, blog or Facebook posts and tweets — when everyone has many other jobs to do is becoming almost impossible. Not to mention curating, following, reading  (remember that?), and finding photos and graphics.

All of this pressure inevitably has an effect on quality.

Major newspaper editors were forced to acknowledge this fact this past summer after This American Life ran an expose showing they published dozens of items in print or online that appeared under fake bylines. The papers had outsourced their local news writing – police beats, community meetings, real estate sales and high school track-meet results – to a company called Journatic, a news outsourcing firm that was paying writers abroad to write the posts.

In many cases, it turned out, the hyper local stuff that matters very much if its your son’s school lunch menu or your tax dollars being debated at the city council meeting, were being written quickly and without context often by writers in the Philippines.

Editors admitted that when you cut costs, you also cut corners, that gathering local news that people care about may in fact require actual people who are familiar with the local news. Which does cost some money.

At the same time there is evidence that readers still have an appetite for good writing online and that we will spend time, significant time, on a story that has value for us, that’s smart, well-written and grounded in content and timely context. [See “Longer, original posts bring readers back”].

At HiredPen we know you need good writing that represents the nuance of your work. We distinguish ourselves from those “content factories” by creating real value for readers and the field to help you build an authentic audience.

There are close to 180 million blogs on the internet, according BlogPulse. Valuable content is what cuts through the noise, gains an audience, and keeps it—content that speaks to its audience, answers its questions, piques its curiosity. And people are much more likely to share your work with their online networks if they find it valuable.

Instead of an impersonal marketing firm that pays bloggers minimally to churn out copy, we’re aiming to be something much different. As a small firm, we have personal relationships with our clients.  Our bloggers are carefully vetted science writers, many of whom have advanced degrees, with an understanding of the complexities of issues like education, poverty and economic growth, who can give context to your work.  We pay them well to create loyalty and inspire them to write smarter. And with such a commitment, we can and do demand excellence from them.

We don’t just plug a product. We create a context for the research, add insight, and represent your work in its best light.  That takes time, care, and thinking. In the social media world, you truly do get what you pay for.

The post Why Good Writing Matters, Even (and Especially) Online appeared first on HiredPen Inc..

We’ve had lots of fun over the past eight months or so injecting research into these online conversations through our work with the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Building Resilient Regions (BRR).

Housed at the Institute for Government Studies at UC Berkeley, the “BRRistas” as they’re affectionately known, are a group of scholars from around the country who study metro-arearegionalism—the intersection of city and suburb that is now home to two-thirds of the U.S. population.

Their work examining the impact of poverty on foreclosures, for example, or on immigration or infrastructure is increasingly relevant to the policy discussions of the moment. And it can be of great help to local policy leaders in figuring out how to better respond to demographic, social, and economic changes happening at the regional level. While in the past, scholarship like this may have taken months or even years to reach local-level decision makers, through the magic of the internet and online communities— and with our help— we’re watching researchers share this work much more quickly, and effectively.

We began working with BRR on their social media outreach and web presence last year after they decided they wanted to make a broader effort to get their work out to the local policymakers who need it most.

We redesigned their website (within some constraints) to highlight new and applied research and began a daily blog and Twitter feed (@BRRNetwork) designed to tie their research to the day’s news and increase their audience. And having just completed our quarterly reporting, we know just how well it’s working.

We’re pleased to report a sharp increase in traffic since the site redesign.  People are digging deeper into the site and visiting many more pages as they browse. Page views have jumped from 625 per month prior to our redesign to 2900 per month in the 6 months after. Especially considering the small scholarly nature of our niche audience, we’re very pleased.

We have a growing following on Twitter and have blogged on everything from cluster development, to case studies on the foreclosure crisis, to how development policies shape opportunity and social mobility. We’ve got a list of stories in the queue and are exploring collaborative posting with the Metropolitan Planning Council and the Woodstock Institute. And the Network’s research was just highlighted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in their winter issue of Evidence Matters.

Stay tuned for what’s next at brr.berkeley.edu. Do you have a website that needs help? Have research you feel is worth blogging about? Get in touch here.

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