Tumblr Should Hire David

To Tumblr:

Hello. My name is David Grossman, and you should hire me for the position of Tumblr Editor. Your job application didn’t include a place for a cover letter, which I thought would put me at a disadvantage, since most of my relevant experience comes with pretty unimpressive titles, like “Intern”. But! I am qualified for this job. This is the type of job I would thrive in. Let’s go through why:

REASONS

  1. Editorial Product Development/Content Curation: I’ve been working with Tumblr for over two years now, on a professional and personal basis. We both know what makes Tumblr different then other blogging services: the scrolling feed, which allows for a communal feel. And there’s nothing better then when your community gets recognized by a larger group. There’s no real way to say that you’re good at curation other then metrics, so here goes: while I was heading of Lapham Quarterly’s tumblr, it gained over three hundred new followers. And we didn’t just get that through “follow us and win a DVD”, we did it through interacting obsessively with fans, letting them catch our mistakes and giving credit, and hanging out with magazines and bookstores also on the site.
  2. A proven ability to find interesting narratives: perhaps this is where my work at Talking Points Memo or political campaigns can stand out, as those jobs were solely about creating narratives out of the facts on the ground. But those were political jobs, and that’s only one of the many things Tumblr is. Here’s a narrative: one-joke blogs! Like Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things or Feminist Ryan Gosling. Yet so many of these blogs burn out very quickly. I see a portion of the Community Editor’s job as one of journalism, investigating Tumblr and figuring why, for example, the creators of some of these blogs give it up while others keep them going. Going to known and trusted tumblr-ers for opinions on the day’s event (asking The New Inquiry what they think of the latest Nobel literature winner, for example) could strengthen ties between Tumblr and Tumblr-ers, for example. I’m just spitballing here, but you get the idea: crafting narrative is a passion of mine. Speaking of passion, let’s go to Number Three, which happens to be
  3. Passion: Look, everyone will tell you this. And I’m sure many of them will also have stories of unemployment (hence the large blank spots in my resume). But when I look at Tumblr, I see the future of a thousand different things: feminism, music, fashion, science, Kim Jong-Il-Looking-At-Things-Studies, etc. The magic point of Tumblr, what Blogspot, Wordpress, or whoever else cannot do, is that the community is the first thing you see when you log in. You’re already interacting before you’ve even written a single word or uploaded a single picture. I cannot express how excited I am at the possibility of working with Tumblr, and I sincerely look forward to hearing from you.

Yours,

David Grossman

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