Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) links to Knoxville blogger Katie Allison Granju who notes that
“It’s estimated that the American newspaper workforce shrunk by a whopping 15% last year.”
and asks,
“So what happens to a reporter or editor after she loses her job in an industry that isn’t creating any new jobs?”
So — where do laid-off journalists go? Ms Granju gives a few examples, and links to a piece in the American Journalism Review titled “Is There Life After Newspapers?” which gives plenty more details and anecdotes, but the money-quote out of all this discussion comes from a comment at the knoxnews blog, pointed out by Carolina blogger par excellence Jon Ham:
If journalists know half of what they pretend to know when they’re working as journalists, they should have no problem getting jobs as climatologists, engineers, lawyers, and military consultants, to name a few professions.
January 31, 2009, 6:48 pm at 6:48 pm
Id be guessing after their performance with Obama most of them would have stretch marks around their mouths….
The downside is one of my favourite webcomics and apparently many others are being axed in the name of cost cutting.
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2009-01-27/index.html
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/1999-06-21/index.html
He has written a bit about it on the site.
Here, http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/apocalypse.html
February 1, 2009, 5:38 am at 5:38 am
I didn’t know that “journalists” got laid. Hmmm, things you don’t learn on the interwebby.
February 4, 2009, 1:43 am at 1:43 am
I didn’t realise they were affected by the recession. Good. But who gives a rat’s ass where they go? Hopefully their lives are so absorbed in their “work” that they commit suicide when made redundant, in a way that minimally inconveniences their neighbours and the local health services. A big bonfire in the back garden, plus petrol, would do it.
March 5, 2009, 3:18 am at 3:18 am
So ThinandBritish you didn’t realise journalists were affected by the recession? It’s obvious from your words that you know or care very little about anything.
At least the vast majority of journos I know write a lot more sense than you – and in a much more enertaining way.
March 5, 2009, 10:51 am at 10:51 am
I think you’re missing TAB’s point, Ross. Like many Right-leaning bloggers, my bet is that he takes issue with the main stream media being too biased towards the liberal side of politics.