When Al Jazeera bought Current in January for $500 million, the Qatar-based news network announced that Al Gore’s little-watched cable operation would be turned into Al Jazeera America, which would compete with CNN and Fox. Al Jazeera America is now dealing with a stack of 12,000 resumés.
I reported this unhappy development on the Reader‘s blog, the Bleader, and promptly got an e-mail from a Nishith Sharma bringing cheerier news. “I am a co-founder of Frrole, a fast growing local news app that has many times been called the future of news,” said Sharma, writing, it turned out, from Bangalore, India. “With the news of Everyblock shutting down all around, I find it [the] right context and time to introduce Frrole to you.”
Alas, he’d caught me on a bad day. My focus wasn’t on the Lincolnian virtues of people’s journalism, splendid as those surely are. I was wondering where new jobs might come from. Clearly, Frrole wasn’t designed to provide them.
Collender isn’t directly involved with Al Jazeera’s hiring; he works for a Washington, D.C., PR firm, and Al Jazeera America is a client. But about a dozen people he knows have asked him personally about working there. Some are TV producers, others editors and on-air talent. About a third had lost their jobs recently; the others were working but felt uneasy. “They’re looking at Al Jazeera as a very, very good organization with a solid operation,” says Collender.
