The Sweaty Penguin is an award-winning comedy climate program presented by PBS’s national climate initiative Peril and Promise. Through late-night-comedy-style monologues and in-depth expert interviews, The Sweaty Penguin cuts through the doom-and-gloom of the climate conversation. Our team is a small group of motivated, creative, multi-talented students and recent graduates working remotely across the continent with a variety of skill sets, and a shared passion for making climate change less overwhelming, less politicized, and more fun.
Our Researcher position is an opportunity for college students to research climate issues, develop their writing and communication skills, and receive leadership opportunities in short order. Your day-to-day responsibilities will involve research and fact checking for podcast scripts, as well as some special projects related to social media, fundraising, and creating a new newsletter. After a few months, Researchers will receive opportunities to write full drafts of scripts as well.
The role is a part-time, paid opportunity, and we are looking to fill the position as quickly as possible. As a small but growing organization, we like to find team members who want to grow with us — that’s why we cater the position to college students, especially underclassmen, who can join, learn with us, and spend a few years leaving their mark on The Sweaty Penguin.
Benefits and pay range:
🐧 $15 per hour
🐧 Remote
🐧 5 hours per week
🐧 Aside from required meetings, you can set your own hours
🐧 Can be flexible with school, other jobs, and vacations, with advance planning
Responsibilities and Duties will include some combination of:
🐧 Researching podcast scripts
🐧 Fact checking and transcribing episodes
🐧 Contributing content for social media posts
🐧 Supporting various projects around social media, fundraising, and creating a new newsletter
Requirements and Qualifications:
🐧 College student in the class of 2025, 2026, or 2027
🐧 Exceptional writer
🐧 Past educational or extracurricular experience with climate issues
🐧 Passions for combating climate doom and finding bipartisan common ground on climate solutions
🐧 An affinity for leadership, teamwork, and taking initiative
🐧 A sense of humor (but don’t worry, our Comedy Writers handle the jokes!)
**Applicants must be over 18 years old.**
To apply, please fill out the form below and attach your resume. In lieu of a cover letter, we ask you to answer a few short answer questions and complete a writing prompt where you will be able to show off your writing skills, climate passion, and creativity. Besides the final writing prompt, please keep all other answers to 150 words or less. If you have any questions, please email Emma Jones at emma.jones@ku.edu
Applications officially close at 11:59pm ET on Friday, October 13, 2023. However, we plan to conduct interviews and offer positions on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early!
Writing Prompt: Pick a past episode of The Sweaty Penguin and write a mock Twitter thread based on that episode. Click here for an example. A Twitter thread is a series of connected tweets (each 280 characters or less), which many communicators use to break down a topic for a lay social media audience in a digestible, engaging manner. This thread is obviously not going on Twitter, but we do expect you to adhere to the same character constraints. Your thread must include a minimum of five tweets, and may include up to twenty, but remember — the longer the thread, the less likely Twitter users would be to read it all! Please type out your thread and upload it as a PDF.
0 Comments