Alanna EatonWriting Project 7

So, You Think You Can Write?

Fairlight Baer-Gutierrez (don’t let her name intimidate you) is a product manager at the online company, examiner.com. The 32 year old has been at the examiner.com for 2 ½ years and shares a passion for writing along with the citizens from the local Denver area.

Examiner.com is basically a website where the general public of Denver may try their hand at writing. It’s all about the people. The writers come to the examiner.com with experience in certain topics, such as: parenting, restaurants, pets, religion, Denver nightlife and many other interesting subjects. Historically, examiner.com is a start-up company, a part of the Anschutz corporation and slightly resemble other papers like one in D.C. and San Francisco.

So what’s a day like at examiner.com? “It’s like 9 hours of pure chaos,” states Gutierrez. Among that chaos, there are about 80 people on staff, all with a diverse professional background and about 2 dozen people on staff under the age of 25. Among this staff, there are also about 70,000 freelancers. But amidst of this “chaos”, Gutierrez says there is more respect and understanding of one’s weekend. Gutierrez herself works about 45-50 hours per week, but explains that the company used to be very tightly wound, especially about work on the weekends.

Gutierrez touches on what is most rewarding to her. She loves debuting new products, releasing them to the public. And she knows this is a “little cliché”, but she loves hearing and seeing the stories that don’t get told. That’s the beauty of this business.

Wondering about her name? Gutierrez explains that as her mother was pregnant with her, she was reading a book called Christy, written by Catherine Marshall. Fairlight was a character in the book and the rest was history. Gutierrez received her bachelor’s degree in Editorial Journalism from the University of Colorado Boulder with an emphasis in biology. Before coming to work for the examiner.com, Gutierrez worked at yourhub.com and several local newspapers before that.

As for her future, she has a 1 year old son, Sol, and a loving husband who works from home. Gutierrez believes that she can’t build her career from working around a website company like this, but plans on staying there for a couple more years before she decides what to do next.

*Check out Gutierrez’s favorite examiners at examiner.com: Wacky Question examiner, Twilight examiner, Food writer and Weather writer.