We dropped the ball with one of our writers, and it’s time to hold ourselves accountable.
When it comes to publishing articles, we at AJnet take pride in our high standards of quality, excellence, and truthfulness. We expect all of our writers (except for Frosty) to adhere to these high standards, and write articles of only the highest caliber.
That’s why, as CEO of the AJnet Organization and Editor-in-chief of AJnet Magazine, when I found out that one of our writers lied about their credentials, I was very upset.
Just like most professional publications, our process for hiring writers typically involves a background check, several interviews, and a skill test to ascertain the candidate’s capabilities. This process ensures that AJnet hires only the best of the best. We used to have trial by combat, but Jamir in Legal put the kibosh on that real quick. Apparently having candidates literally fight each other for employment violates multiple laws. I don’t get it, it’s not like we had them fighting to the death or anything, we’re not barbarians. But Jamir knows the law better than we do, so what he says goes.
In 2023, a man named Troy Jackson applied for a writing job at our publication with one of the best resumes we’d ever seen. Troy was a graduate of Syracuse University, and was willing to leave his job as a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Huffington Post to come write for us. In retrospect, I’m not sure why nobody bothered to look into these claims. I’m serious, Sam. How the fuck didn’t you think to at least Google the guy? When someone comes to a small internet publication claiming they worked for the Huffington Post and received a Pulitzer Prize you don’t just take that shit at face value.
In any case, we hired Troy with the assumption that he was telling the truth about his credentials, and we allowed him to write multiple news articles about things that never happened. There was no “mass-pieing” in Brownsburg, Indiana. Schools in Wadena, Minnesota weren’t evacuated due to peanuts. Audi cars don’t have a problem with acceleration. Virtually every single story Troy Jackson published on AJnet has been a lie. Looking back, it should have been obvious when he was ending every article with a disclaimer. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
My first thought was to fire Troy. But then I realized that, as Editor-in-chief, the blame falls directly on myself as well.
One of my duties as the Editor-in-chief is to manually review every article submitted to this publication before approving it. I dropped the ball here big time, and I want to apologize to all of our loyal readers for allowing multiple articles of a fictitious nature to be published on AJnet by an author with equally fictitious credentials. I screwed up, I let our readers down by approving fake news articles for publication. This isn’t the kind of high quality content AJnet Magazine is known for, and I am ashamed to say that my lapse in performance allowed this low-quality fictitious content to be published and tarnish the AJnet name and brand.
The blame falls equally on myself for blindly approving these articles and on Sam, our Chief Operating Officer, for hiring Troy without evaluating his credentials first. As such, we have decided not to fire Troy. Troy is currently working with some of our other writing staff to improve his writing ability and come up with content that isn’t just made-up news stories. We hope that Troy will be able to redeem himself and create content that meets the high standards of our publication.
Going forward, I promise to do a better job as Editor-in-chief and actually read the articles I’m approving. Sam will remain our COO, however he will no longer be handling staffing. That role will instead be filled by Jackie, our dedicated Personnel Manager. Jackie has over ten years of experience in evaluating and hiring candidates, and I have no doubt that she will prove to be a valuable asset to the AJnet Organization.
We hope that our readers will find it in their hearts to forgive us for our mistake. Your continued readership is very important to us, and we hope you’ll continue to read AJnet Magazine. There are many other publications on the internet, most of which are way better than ours. The fact that you chose to read AJnet instead of those much better publications means the world to us. We also hope you’ll forgive Troy as we have and encourage him to grow as a legitimate writer.
Again, our deepest apologies to anyone we may have upset or offended. We promise to do better going forward.
– AJ
Editor-in-chief