| Who wants to lead? Every few years, Burnt Orange Report reinvents itself. It last happened almost five years ago with a major site upgrade that gave our site its current look, and with the expansion of our writing staff from around four regular writers to around eight. In those five years, we've been through: - Special sessions where Republicans raised taxes while creating a permanent structural deficit that is the primary source of our current $27 billion budget crisis
- The Boyd Richie vs. Glen Maxey TDP Chair race of 2006
- Bob Gammage vs. Chris Bell primary in 2006, and Bell's subsequent run for Governor
- The 2007 Speaker's drama, which culminated in the ousting of Craddick and election of Speaker Straus in 2009
- The Rick Noriega U.S. Senate campaign
- Clinton vs. Obama and one hell of a primary
- The election of President Barack Obama
- The Bill White campaign, and the accompanying 2010 massacre
- Countless Austin city council races, State House races, and more
Throughout the years, Burnt Orange Report has provided an honest, well-researched, progressive viewpoint of Texas politics. We've made passionate arguments, broken news stories, and served as a community forum for Texas Democrats. Now, we need you to continue the tradition. KT, Matt and I aren't going anywhere entirely, but our roles are changing. For some time now, KT and Matt have worked diligently on a new design for BOR. Within weeks -- and possibly days -- we'll have the new site layout up and running, and with the new site we want to have new writers. Not just one, and not just two. We want eight or ten writers. We want writers from across Texas, not just from Austin. We want new voices from new backgrounds, able to write and analyze politics from Beaumont to Brownsville, Dallas to El Paso, and everywhere in between. The qualifications are simple: - Willingness to take on assigned writing
- Ability to brainstorm and creatively develop your own analysis
- Strong technical writing
- A passion for developing the way we think, understand, and act as Democrats in Texas
We will have much more on the future of BOR -- including the new roles KT, Matt, myself, Katherine and others will play -- in the coming days. Broadly speaking, though, know that we have developed a plan to double, then triple, our traffic. We are going to aggressively market our site, expand our readership and -- with that -- hopefully expand our influence in the state of Texas. All we need is you to lead. If you want to be considered for a writing position on BOR, please send your name, contact information, where you currently live, areas/topics of interest you'd want to write about, and two writing samples of your choosing to phillip@burntorangereport.com. Thanks, and good luck! |
