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Apple seeks fawning 'journalists' for in-house 'news' self pluggery

And they'll rip off random blogs too – unless the ungrateful gits complain too loudly

Apple is hiring journos for its latest Apple News venture, a move that will presumably mean it is bringing some of the mountains of breathless product announcement coverage in-house.

According to a job advert, Apple is looking for editors to help identify and deliver "the best in breaking national, global, and local news".

The role requires a bachelor's degree in journalism or "a related field", more than five years of newsroom experience and "a deep knowledge of multiple content categories".

"They will have great instincts for breaking news, but be equally able to recognise original, compelling stories unlikely to be identified by algorithms," it said.

It added: "Successful editors will be ambitious, detail-oriented journalists with an obsession for great content and mobile news delivery."

Not surprisingly, the ad fails to mention anything about independent journalism. So when news breaks about its nemesis Google's Android, or factory conditions in China, we can be sure Apple News will be scrupulous in its complete lack of coverage.

The fruity firm announced its News app at its Apple Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month.

It recently sent an emails to a number of Apple bloggers, including Mike Ash, who writes about Mac developments, notifying them it wants to include their content on the app's RSS feed.

However, Ash noted in a blog post that Apple is applying an "opt out" approach to scraping his content.

He wrote: "Let me get this straight, Apple: you send me an e-mail outlining the terms under which you will redistribute my content, and you will just assume that I agree to your terms unless I opt out?"

He described the approach of trying to dictate terms and telling him he automatically agreed unless he opted out as "unacceptable". ®

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