Resilience is the Key to Surviving a Layoff
By Eileen Briesch For Displaced Journalists Two years ago, I got the word: Your life is ending. The career for which you worked the past 30-plus years is over. It was a normal Friday night, and then it wasn’t. We were going to order pizza from my favorite pizza place, and I was going around [...]
WRITER’S LIFEGUARD: Saving the Chron
By Jules Older, independent columnist For better and worse, I tend to work on inspiration, not preparation. Better because I drop everything except deadlines and focus like a laser on the new project. Worse because I drop everything except deadlines. When everyone around you is expecting a right turn, a sudden swerve to the left [...]
WRITER’S LIFEGUARD: Show Me the Money
Editor’s note: Our most prolific Displaced Journalists member is definitely Jules Older, who shares my last name, but not my genes. We ran one of his Writer’s LifeGuard columns titled “Don’t Let the Bastards Rip You off” August 12, 2010. (Just check our archives.) These two columns deal with the same subject: what freelancers can [...]
Gloating and the War in the World of Local
Schadenfreude, Part Two: I Apologize By Debbie Galant, Baristanet Posted September 8, 2011 on Authentically Local Schadenfreude, or gloating over another’s misfortune, is not a pretty thing. By definition. And though I’m used to being scolded by readers, my upbraiding by some of the Patch rank-and-file over my last post here has left me unexpectedly chastened. I [...]
Readers Can’t Trust Sites that Run Sloppy Copy
Susan older DisplacedJournalists.com news sites lose reader trust when they publish errors and sloppy copy.
Writers Lifeguard: Why can’t I write killer ledes?
This is a Writer’s Lifeguard column Jules Older wrote before we started publishing his commentary here on Displaced Journalists. If you’re sensitive about reading what a few Amazon reviewers called “raunchy” language in reference to one of the books Jules mentions, stop reading now. Otherwise, enjoy. It’s one of those pieces that never loses its [...]
Harlan Ellison: Pay the Writer
Do you ever feel like caving in and writing “for exposure”? Do you just want a reminder of why you haven’t done so? Watch the Harlan Ellison video: Pay the Writer. It’s a classic.
WRITERS LIFEGUARD: What to do when there’s naught to do
By Jules Older When you’re out of work, or, put more genteelly, underemployed, what do you do with your newfound leisure time? By ‘leisure time,’ I mean time nobody’s paying you to use. Everybody’s different in needs, time, mortgages and inclination, but I know what’s working for me. In hopes that some of it will [...]
Mercury News: Does God Have a Facebook Page?
By Mike Cassidy Mercury News Are you there God? It’s me, twitter.com/mikecassidy. Maybe it’s no surprise that we’ve reached the point where, rather than looking to the heavens to find God, we’re looking to the cloud. It’s where we live now, with iPods, iPads, Android gizmos, social networks. The town square, complete with steepled church, [...]
Reflections of a Newsosaur: Why the Daily will succeed – or not
By Alan D. Mutter Reflections of a Newsosaur Monday, Jan. 31 2011 The Daily, which is set to launch this week, could be a captivating hit, a spectacular miss or something in between. But one thing is sure: Rupert Murdoch, the last swashbuckling publisher of our time, will shake up the media world on Wednesday [...]
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Welcome to Our Community
Is there life – or work – after newspapers? A lot of us are in the process of finding out. Because it’s generally a somewhat lonely endeavor, it struck me, in January 2010, that it might be comforting – and possibly very productive – to go through it together.
Displaced Journalists is a community – our community – where we find common ground, where we can begin to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get on with our lives and livelihoods. [more]