What a way to start the morning:

Yup, that’s right; my former employer the Lawrence Journal-World – one of the most ground-breaking, award-winning, forward-looking, innovative news organizations in the world – is now serving pop-under ads.

I really did think that my former bosses, friends, and colleagues there knew better. I can only hope this was a top-down do-it-or-lose-your-job edict, but even that smacks of the kind of dictatorial micromanagement I thought the company was above.

Almost four years ago, Adrian posted about a job opening at this little newspaper in the middle of the country. He wrote that

World Online is […] one of the most innovative online-news operations in the world. Our main sites […] have garnered an impressive batch of industry awards – and tremendous industry attention – over the past few years.

[…]

We strive for innovation, nimble development and the use of best practices. We have a near-religious focus on doing things the right way – clean URLs, CSS, separation of content from presentation, accessibility, solid application design, etc.

I’m extremely excited to announce our new internship program here in Lawrence. Starting this summer we’re going to be hiring interns to join our kick-ass team and learn the ropes.

If you’re a student, or if you’re trying to break into the world of next-generation web development, I can’t think of a better place to get started. You’ll get to spend up to six months developing cool toys (in Django, of course), live in one of the coolest towns in the country, and learn web development from the best.

I’m thrilled to announce we’ve hired James Bennett (a.k.a ubernostrum in #django) as World Online’s new front end developer.

About a month ago he wrote:

I’m desperately looking for someone to pay me to build something with Django, and if it doesn’t happen soon I’m just going to go on strike.

Whew — strike averted.

Seriously, though we’re extremely excited to have James joining our team, and we can’t wait to see the cool shit he’s going to build here.

Want to work for the most innovative news organization in the country, if not the world? Want to join a team of the best and brightest online media developers? Want to get paid to create award-winning web sites?

Well, have I got the job for you: World Online is looking for a kick-ass front-end web developer.