Assistance requested for the editorial team

The largely volunteer editors of ‘the Posts’, as we conveniently call Zeepost, Scheepspost and Windassist, are overflowing with work. For specifically two tasks, we could do with some help: ‘Technical Editor’ and ‘News Chaser Windassist’.

The editors of ‘the Posts’ work mainly on Mondays and Tuesdays. On Monday mornings, news is inventoried: newsletters we receive, and all kinds of news we find ourselves on the internet. For each topic, we discuss what we do with it, and who will work with it to convert in into a readable article. In this way we make about ten posts per ‘Post’ per week, and once every fortnight also for Windassist, the successor of Zeilpost.

Technical Editor

Everything is created in the WordPress web environment, and that means more than just loading the text. When an article is ready, a whole list of checkpoints has to be ticked off, to see if everything has been entered correctly. And once everything is on the website, it also has to be checked that it all looks right; not only on screen, but also on a cellphone.

Precise

In the daily editorial practice, which often involves working on several articles simultaneously, it turns out that the peace and quiet required to carefully and patiently check all the checkpoints is often lacking. And then things are forgotten or mistakes are made, which our webmaster Willem later has to rectify. We would therefore be greatly helped by a meticulous person who could free up an hour at the end of each Tuesday afternoon to check the checklist for each article, so that we can put everything in order before Willem sends out the newsletters.

Technical final editing

You could call it ‘technical final editing’, but you don’t need a detailed knowledge of WordPress for it. Willem has plenty of that. Of course, experience with WordPress will be useful, but what you need to know can be learnt in a day by anyone who is not afraid of computers. The rest is mainly a matter of careful work. The time for it is fairly fixed: Tuesday afternoons between 5 and 7. In summer, we are off the air for a few weeks.

News Chaser Windassist

The help we are looking for for Windassist is of a very different nature. For that, we need someone to scour the internet for (international) news about sail cargo, sail training and wind support (WASP). A huge amount is happening in this field. However, often news about a new WASP installation is repeated by all kinds of sources, or even copied from each other. It is then a matter of picking out the most interesting news.

Double translation

Searching for “the good news” takes a lot of time. And that is at the expense of execution, which involves several translations. First into Dutch, where we then delete and complete, summarise and rewrite. Then back again to English – a feature that is fortunately built into WordPress. But that ‘reverse translation’ has to be checked again. All in all, a lot of work. And because news is sometimes quite hard to find, it takes a disproportionate amount of time.

Sources & editors

The editors would therefore be greatly helped by someone willing to scour the internet for ‘Windassist news’ in their spare time, to pass it on to us in the form of a fortnightly list of links. It would be nice if, in addition, that could lead to a real editorial addition, because creating articles for Windassist – and for the other ‘Posts – will also start to demand more and more of us. But that is in the future.

What do we offer?

The above volunteer positions do not involve a salary. However, the board of the Zeepost Foundation is happy to discuss with you what you need to do the work, and try to provide it to the best of its ability.

Who, what, where?

The editorial board, which consists of four members, meets occasionally in Amsterdam, but most consultation is done digitally on Mondays. Consultation with the editor-in-chief is always possible.
Are you up for it? Then write to the editor, or call +31 6 50218695.
You are more than welcome!

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