Easing the Pain of Being Laid Off, One Email at a Time
Steve Jaffe was laid off for the first time in 2001. But that wasn’t the last time for Mr. Jaffe, now 52 and a self-employed marketing strategist in Altadena, Calif. He was laid off three more times over the course of his career, he said, and wrote a book about his experiences that he self-published in February.
In addition to writing about jobs he has lost, Mr. Jaffe has been reading the layoff stories of others in Laid Off, a new Substack newsletter. “A support group like this for laid-off people has always been needed,” he said.
Melanie Ehrenkranz, 35, started Laid Off last August, about a year after she lost her job at a financial technology company that has since closed. After being laid off, she said, “I didn’t really feel like I had access to a community or to stories of layoffs outside of a group chat with two of my former colleagues.” By the time she introduced the newsletter, Ms. Ehrenkranz, who lives in Los Angeles, had started working for Business Class, an online entrepreneurship course created by the “#Girlboss” author Sophia Amoruso, where Ms. Ehrenkranz is still employed.
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.