Job Quest Advice: Take Your Skills with You

By Michael Gauger For nearly 20 years, I was a newspaper copy editor in Milwaukee, where I was born and grew up. But in the last few years, the Journal Sentinel had been cutting its staff through buyouts. In the summer of ’09, a round of buyouts didn’t yield enough cuts for the company, and in [...]

Knowledgewebb Launches Displaced Journalists Partnership with Free “Tech Savvy” Webinar

By Amy Webb CEO, Knowledgewebb Knowledgewebb is pleased to partner with Displaced Journalists to offer community members a deep discount on its annual membership dues. Knowledgewebb offers hands-on training, self-directed courses, ongoing webinars and more for professionals working in publishing and small-business communications. Need pointers on how to edit an audio podcast? Want to brush [...]

Which is Worse: The Waiting or the Fear?

By Holly Kerfoot “Dead man walking!” The feeling that this should be shouted in the newsroom when I pass by has faded, as have the murmurs of sympathy from those who – for now – will be keeping their jobs. What remains is the uncertainty. You see, I work on a copy desk that is [...]

DPJ Member: I Walk on Quicksand All Day Long

Hi, everyone. I agreed to publish this first-person piece from a member of our community without a byline because sometimes finding catharsis is hard enough without having to put your name up there in bright lights. As much as I’d love to have Displaced Journalists write and sign their stories, it’s getting to the point [...]

From AJR: Capital Flight  

Watchdog reporting is at an alarming low at many federal agencies and departments whose actions have a huge impact on the lives of American citizens. This article appears in the June/July issue of American Journalism Review. It was funded by the Open Society Institute. By Jodi Enda After an explosion killed 29 coal miners in [...]

Displaced Journalist Replaces “The Rocky” with ”Fit to Print” Life

M.E. Sprengelmeyer is ”reporter/publisher” of The Guadalupe County Communicator, a 2,000-circulation weekly in the colorful Route 66 community of Santa Rosa, New Mexico. M.E., as he prefers to be called, was Washington correspondent for the Rocky Mountain News when the Denver-based newspaper published its final edition February 27, 2009. He was a displaced journalist, but not for [...]

Don’t Let Inertia Tie You Down: Adversity Leads to New Opportunities

By Marcie Eanes March 17, 2010 Recent upheavals in journalism have left people scratching their heads at this unprecedented level of uncertainty. All the hard work of building a career can easily disappear with a pink slip. After packing up your desk, commiserating with colleagues, and trying to put on a brave front, the question of what to do [...]

The World Needs a Good Editor

By Susan Older Founder, Displaced Journalists One of the things that irritates me most about the layoffs and firings at newspapers, magazines and major websites these days is the fact that the people in charge have chosen replacements who don’t seem to care about the quality of the product. Either that or they are uneducated. [...]

DPJs: I Value Your Ideas, as Well as Your Identities

Melanie Kolden is a former copy editor/arts & entertainment editor who  has worked at the Dayton Daily News, the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Weekly. By Melanie Kolden I am a journalist, but I don’t have a recognizable byline. For all of the years that I worked in newspapers (15 plus) I was a behind-the-scenes player. Most [...]

Print May Be on the Way Out, but Content is Here to Stay

By Mark Mayfield Thirty-two years ago I was a senior in college, and editor of my campus newspaper. I wrote editorials and columns on an old manual typewriter, with carbon sheets placed between cheap yellow pulp paper. Sound familiar? Anyone of my generation can remember a time before computers, before VCRs/DVRS, before cell phones and, [...]