When a Journalist is Laid Off . . . .

From the NY Times. This is an excerpt. To read the entire piece, click here.

Have Keyboard, Will Travel

By SHEELAH KOLHATKAR

You can tell when a print journalist has lost his full-time job because of the digital markings that suddenly appear, like the tail of a fading comet. First, he joins Facebook. A Gmail address is promptly obtained. The Twitter account comes next, followed by the inevitable blog. Throw in a LinkedIn profile for good measure. This online coming-out is the first step in a daunting, and economically discouraging, transformation: from a member of a large institution to a would-be Internet “brand.”

Dozens of websites have correspondingly sprouted up, posting articles written for free or for a fraction of what a traditional magazine would have paid. Into this gaping maw have rushed enough authors to fill a hundred Roman Colosseums, all eager to write in exchange for “exposure.” Paul Smalera, a 29-year-old who was laid off from a magazine job in November 2008, is now competing with every one of them. And after months of furious blogging, tweeting and writing for Web sites, Paul has made a career of Internet journalism, sort of.

In the process, he’s had to redefine success. While he is doing work that he finds satisfying, he is earning around half of the $63,000 he made as a full-time employee, and he doesn’t have health insurance — or prospects for getting any. He has very little in savings and a mountain of credit-card and student-loan debt. “I think the economics are bleak right now, but in the long run, the opportunities are going to be online, and that’s why I’m willing to make the investment,” he told me over coffee.

Paul is tall with shaggy brown hair and a round, stubbled face that supports a pair of hipster eyeglasses. The one-bedroom apartment that he shares with his girlfriend — and where he now works — is improbably tidy, with throw cushions, bowls of fruit and potted plants. Like more than a few idealistic young people, he packed up a U-Haul and moved to New York with fuzzy ideas about becoming a writer and little sense of how to go about doing it or what it entailed.