Monday, March 05, 2007

Want to be "vice president of sales"?

Is the Examiner group was in dire straits? Check out this ad for a "vice president of sales."

Who advertises for a vice president of anything? Isn't "vice president" supposed to be a special job? Not something you advertise on Billboard.com, right? But consider the Examiner's current state. If you page through the Examiner free dailies, you'll see that they have maybe 20, 25 paid ads per day. Obviously not enough to break even. The Examiner was planning to go into 70 cities a couple of years ago. They seemed to have hit a dead end after paper No. 3. And check out the weird job interview process, as described by the Washington Post:
    [Stephen G.] Smith was recruited for the Examiner job by a headhunting firm. His interview with the intensely private [Phil] Anschutz took place in an airplane hanger at Dulles International Airport, after the billionaire flew in on his private jet from New York. The politics of the two men align. Anschutz is conservative; Smith describes himself as "to the right of the journalism spectrum ..."
Can't you see Smith talking to some mysterious guy like the "Smoking Man" from the X-Files?

But the job has another title besides Vice President. According to the ad, the "VIP of Sales has the opportunity to work with the local papers to build and execute strategies ..." The VIP of sales! Hey, you're not just a vice president, you're a "very important person" too!