The Journalism Shop Surveys Former LAT Staffers

Brett Levy at The Journalism Shop polled 75 former LAT staffers and has a grim assessment of how they’re doing now. It seems our dark vision of a bunch of seasoned reporters a decade from retirement age suddenly out of work and feeling obsolete in an industry forever changed is…well, not too far off.

Levy writes:

More than two-thirds are still receiving unemployment checks, though 68 percent expect those benefits to expire within 30 weeks of when the survey was taken in mid-November. The loss of benefits are despite the 14-20 week-extension recently signed by President Barack Obama.

The eventual end of benefits weighs heavily on the former Times employees.

“I’m hanging in there, but don’t know what I’ll do when I don’t have unemployment as a base,” wrote one female ex-staffer. “I’m in my 50s and it isn’t easy to find a job at my level and impossible to find one that pays what I used to make.” All comments were offered anonymously in the survey.

Read the whole piece here.

Previously on FBLA:

The Journalism Shop of Former LAT Staffers Launches

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.