Congress and Public Policy Writer: VoterPunch needs an expert on U.S. Congress & Public Policy to write Congressional vote descriptions for our searchable database of Congressional votes. To see what the job entails, the best thing to do is to visit www.ProgressivePunch.Org, a licensee of ours, and drill down until you actually see paragraph long individual vote descriptions (one click past the 1 sentence vote description summaries). We’re looking for people who are very lucid and succinct expository writers (think magazine writing not theses.) You should also have a very comprehensive knowledge of the inner workings of the US Congress – e.g. parliamentary maneuverings such as motions to recommit, previous question motions etc. as well as a broad command of the range of policy issues confronting Congress and the politics that surround Congressional votes. We’re looking for someone who has this information down cold, not a first year Ph.D. student who’s just learning it. The two individuals who have written the descriptions that are currently posted on the site are PhD candidates in political science at the University of California, Berkeley – one in fact is a second generation Congressional scholar. But you don’t have to be an academic, especially since we aim at a popular audience. Actual Capital Hill experience highly desirable, not absolutely mandatory. Send CV, cover letter & (preferably non-academic) political writing sample to Jobs@VoterPunch.org. If academic writing is only thing available, send that. SUBMIT WRITING SAMPLE WITH YOUR INITITAL APPLICATION AND COVER LETTER OR YOU WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED FOR THE POSITION. An ideal writing submission would incorporate the following elements: a) describes/reviews a specific piece of legislation and/or a floor vote in Congress, b) explains the politics of the matter (e.g. How Republicans are trying to screw Democrats and vice versa), b) demystifies/explains the parliamentary maneuvering, c) explains the actual public policy implications of the legislation, and d) provides the rationales behind both the conservative and the progressive perspective.
(Posted 4/11/05)
