Nerds and Newsrooms

A couple of quick items related to the Newspapers Need Nerds! article posted on March 8th:

• Adrian “Django” Holovaty says that washingtonpost.com is looking for a web developer. SOunds like a fun job, and you’ll get to work on projects with very high visibility (that’s important to me personally) to boot! Since Adrian’s the alpha geek there, web apps will be developed in Django (but your Ruby on Rails experience won’t be held against you if you’re willing to forget all that “black magic”). Special consideration will be given to candidates who have contributed to open source projects, have some web app side projects, have a weblog or have journalism experience. Examples of the types of sites that the successful candidate will work on include:
  • John McCain’s campaign contributions
  • Faces of the Fallen
  • Mixed Messages
  • President Bush Latin America trip map
  • Clinton’s Golden Voice
  • U.S. Congress votes database
  • Video Game Reviews database
• Howard Owens writes that journalists can program too. “The point here is that if you’re a journalist and have an opportunity to make a contribution to your career, your company or to our industry through programming, don’t let the math thing scare you. You can do it. Eighty percent of programming (if my math is right) is easy. If I can do it, you can.”