What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Anonymous asked: Foz, can I ask, how did you get to write for the Huffington Post? Did they recruit you or did you submit a piece to them? How does it all work?

Well, I’m not sure what the usual protocol is, but in my case it was the result of a happy accident. I’m not sure if you’re aware of the recent online drama about the existence of a site called STGRB, but in a nutshell: it’s a very problematic outfit, and in order to try and understand their motives, the Huffington Post invited them to defend themselves on the site. A lot of people reacted badly both to STGRB’s subsequent statement and to HuffPo’s decision to let them speak in the first place, primarily because STGRB’s actions had lead to at least one female blogger receiving threatening phone calls IRL. I’d already blogged some commentary on the debacle on my own site, and then happened to be on Twitter at exactly the right moment to witness a couple of bloggers I followed tweet-querying the HuffPo Books account about why STGRB had been allowed on their site. I joined in the conversation, HuffPo mentioned that if any of us wanted to submit a response, they’d be happy to post it, I volunteered, they accepted, I spent the next hour and a bit bashing out an article, I sent it in, and very soon after that it was up. My response was greeted positively, and as it turned out, the HuffPo editor in charge of (among other things) the Twitter account had already seen my previous blogs on the subject. On the basis of that familiarity and the positive reception my response received, he invited me to become a regular contributor, which I accepted, and so here we are.

So, I guess that counts as recruitment, but it was recruitment under very specific and fortuitous circumstances. Had I not been on Twitter at just the right time, or if I’d simply watched the discussion rather than participating, I wouldn’t now be a HuffPo blogger. So the moral of the story is: always be on Twitter, and if you see some interesting people talking about stuff that interests you, join in! You never know what might happen :)

  1. fozmeadows posted this