Roy Greenslade reports on some chilling research into the employment fate of redundant newspaper journalists in the US:
An American Journalism Review article asks: Is there life after newspapers? To that end, it conducted a survey of journalists on US papers who left their jobs between 1999 and 2007. And here's the killer fact: only 6% have since found other newspaper work.
"The rest are doing everything from public relations to teaching to driving a bus and clerking in a liquor store," says the writer, Robert Hodierne. And they are earning less.
Something to think about...
It's a good question - and goes some way towards explaining why, in just coming up to 29 years in journalism, I've been to virtually no retirement bashes. I must have been to dozens of parties for people who are leaving (usually to freelance), either of their own volition or their company's in that time. But obviously people never make it all the way to age 65 in a staff job - and if they leave before then, they don't get another one.
What a poor waste of talent!