A couple of months ago, a Sonoma job listing flew around the internet. Not only was it posted everywhere, but it was emailed to me by about 100 people and even made news in places like the New York Times and LA Times. The headline was that Murphy Goode winery was going to pay someone $10,000 a month to Twitter about wine.
The job, in fact, does pay $10,000 a month for six months, and it also includes accommodations at a beautiful house in Healdsburg. Applications were made in the form of short videos, and the winner will be a "social media whiz" who gets the job and will "report on the cool lifestyle of Sonoma County Wine Country and, of course, tell people what you’re learning about winemaking." Sounds like a good deal to me, and for about 3 seconds I even considered applying myself: $60,000 in six months would be a nice haul in times like this.
I think it's a brilliant stunt by Murphy Goode to generate attention to itself (which it's done in astounding fashion) as well as to ultimately get a lot of information flowing about wine in general. It's also another example of how the mode of reality television is infiltrating reality itself.
Anyway, Murphy Goode received over 900 video applications, and on Friday narrowed down them down to the final 50. Candidates Stephanie, Derek, Tanya and Craig and Adam are all from San Francisco: Five of the top 50, not bad! If you want to follow along, you can watch the video applications here. The final ten will be announced on July 7.
