America's Next Great Pundit, the Post searches for a columnist

Posted by Jennifer Lush on October 8, 2009 at 11:51 AM

What do American Idol, So you think you can dance? and The Washington Post have in common ?

'America's Next Great Pundit' : the Post's own reality-TV style talent competition designed to find it's next columnist.

Ten finalists will be selected from the entries and at the beginning of November beging to compete for the title. The contestants will face off in "challenges that test the skills a modern pundit must possess. They'll have to write on deadline, hold their own on video and field questions from Post readers," states the contest homepage. "After each round, a panel of Post personalities will offer kudos and catcalls, and reader votes will help to determine who gets another chance at a byline and who has to shut down their laptop."

The ultimate winner receives a cash prize of $2600 and the chance to write a weekly column for the Post for 13 weeks, at a going rate of $200 per column. Invitations to enter have been sent to all Post newsletter subscribers in the last week, and competition details and entry forms can be found on the website's Opinion page.

Whilst many have called the competition a publicity stunt to try to boost dwindling sales figures, others have applauded the Post for giving quality bloggers the opportunity to be publicly recognized. Huffington Post blogger, Chris Weigant writes of how the Post is one of the few publications clicking onto a paradigm shift in the industry, and commends it for looking at innovtive ways to draw back readers : "Letting non-professionals have a voice beyond the letters to the editor is indeed a new idea. And Americans love competition. The cheesy 'reality show' contests certainly pull in viewers by the millions. Most importantly, a huge majority of those viewers are young. This is the audience the newspapers need, and have simply not broken into in any significant way."

And why not run a cheesy American Idol spin-off? Now is the time for newspapers to begin experimenting with different ways to lure back their readers, and if at the end of the day, if it works then what is the harm? Editorial page editor of the Post, Fred Hiatt who is overseeing the project said: "I think it's something fun, and to some of the folks I've seen tut-tutting about it, I would say `Lighten up.' We're always trying to reach out beyond the normal Op-Ed-submitting crowd. This is a way to reach even further than we usually do."

Source : New York Times, Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post,