Laid-off journalists have a home

For the unemployed journalist thrown out on his or her keester, Jim Gold, a former senior editor for the Arizona Republic, and his wife Sue have created Jilted Journalists.

It’s nothing much to look at design-wise, and the content is rather thin so far. But it has a cheeky tone, and at least endeavors to offer some helpful advice for those recently reacquainted with the ranks of the unemployed. A couple of highlights:

The middle-class unemployment blues

Laid off in 2007. Relying on an early pension, unemployment benefits and occasional substitute teaching gigs to get by. Followed by a loss of  benefits for a month because of an oversight by the county. Former Minnesota Star Tribune employee Delma J. Francis thought she would finally qualify for food stamps. She was wrong:

With that change in my circumstances, I went back to the county, sure that I would now qualify for EBT, formerly known as food stamps, or medical assistance. (Being on the far side of 40 with no health insurance is not a comfortable place to be.) But no. The $508 a month in early pension and what I had earned substitute teaching the previous pay period rendered me still ineligible for help.

“Wait a minute,” I said to the county worker. “Let me get this straight. Because I’m working when I can, trying to help myself — and by doing so, paying taxes to help all those people out in the waiting room feed their kids and keep themselves healthy — I can’t get any help?”

She just stared at me without an ounce of remorse for the news she’d just delivered.

Chicago Tribune writer covers recession, joins it

Lou Carlozo was covering the recession for the Chicago Tribune. Then he got laid off.

Writing for True/Slant, Carlozo expresses his discontent at being forced by Trib management to write for a blog — “The Recession Diaries” — that, in his words, “involved me telling very tough stories about my own family finances–stories that led me and my wife to squabble many times over which details to withhold, which to print, and which ones looked inappropriate in print after the fact.”

Then, to add insult to the injury of being laid off, the Trib censored Carlozo’s attempt to let his readers know he was joining the ranks of the unemployed:

I wanted to post a final blog Wednesday to readers explaining that I had lost my job, a victim of the very recession I covered. I posted this without management’s approval. I then informed management. Management took it down.

Oh, by the way: On the same day that Carlozo and over 50 newsroom staffers who were laid off by the Tribune, the company petitioned bankruptcy court to dole out $13.3 million in bonuses to over 700 workers.

Unemployment, from blue to red

The U.S. is definitely “in the red” — just look at Slate’s interactive map of job losses across the nation for the visual proof.

Third boxcar, midnight train

What’s the worst the can happen to you in a tanking economy? Joshua Piven, author of  the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series, offered this horror-inducing quote in a Wall Street Journal article about dealing with unemployment in today’s job market:

“You lose your job, you run out of savings or a safety net, have to sell [your] home, it’s a down market and you can’t sell your house, you move, pull the kids out of school, it’s not easy to get another job and your whole lifestyle has to change.

“Then there’s homelessness, maybe spiraling alcoholism, and then living on the side of the train tracks.”

Homelessness? Train tracks? Wait a second …

A Great Depression in California

Heartbreaking nut graph from the Fresno Bee’s story on Life in Mendota, Calif., where the jobless rate is 41 percent:

Welcome to life in Mendota — the unemployment capital of California. With a 41 percent jobless rate, the town’s social fabric is tearing at the seams. Alcoholism and crime are on the rise. To save money, some mothers wash and re-use disposable diapers. Unemployed men with nothing to do wander the streets and sit on benches.

Sunday paper reads

From the New York Times:

Frank Rich on Obama’s dubious choices to lead the nation out of economic turmoil:

The new president who vowed to change Washington’s culture will have to fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the financial bubble’s insiders’ club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe.

From the Wall Street Journal: