Ari joins The Age

This evening, with only a glass of cheap white wine for company, I signed a contract to transform Ari on the Web into Ari at The Age. After an arduous application process involving a folio, a trivia quiz, a writing challenge, and a faux pas involving my gross indifference toward the suffering of others, I have been selected for the Reporting Traineeship.

Though it would be nice to think of it as a case of blogger-boy making it into the big wide world of the MSM, I suspect that my blog was a minor factor at best in my selection. The work I am most proud of - and which had a priviliged place in my portfolio - is the array of work which has appeared in a variety of other outlets, both on- and off-line, and which are featured in the charmingly honest 'Ego File' toward the bottom on the right-hand side.

Perhaps the strongest work was the stuff that appeared in Vibewire, whom incidentally are in the midst of a fundraising campaign. So if you're in the mood to help out a bunch of smartarse young upstarts ambitious young writers, click this way.

The future of AOTW is yet to be decided, but it's unlikely to continue in it's current form once I start work in February. I'll keep you posted.

2007 just got a whole lot more interesting!