Journalist Bailout Plan Offered By Opportunist Blog Evangelicals ‘Six Apart’

Doom Doom Doom… hear that? Doom Doom Doom… that ominous crescendo is the sound of the gods of capital approaching, beating out their final dirge for print media. Hundreds of papers and magazines are shedding jobs (or folding altogether). And you could/will be next!

So what are your options JUNCO (Journalist Unemployed with No Career Options)? Well a nifty company called Six Apart are claiming they can offer a way out, called ‘The Typepad Journalist Bailout Program’:

“Hello, recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist! We’re Six Apart (you know us as the nice folks who make Movable Type or TypePad, which maybe you used for blogging at your old newspaper or magazine) and we want to help you.

“We’re a company founded by bloggers, and we’ve supported online journalism from the beginning. During a time when so many great journalists are worried about losing their jobs, we want to do what we can to help. So we’ve put together a program to put you on your first steps towards independence.”

On first read, it looks as if this lot may be on to something. But they’re not doing it completely out of the kindness of their hearts, are they? Because the ‘bailout’ doesn’t come free – instead, as the creators explain, “the dollar value for you for the TypePad subscription alone works out to over $150 a year,” or $900 for a ‘Business Class’ account. They continue: “we know that for a lot of working journalists, one of the biggest obstacles towards independence can be just trying to figure out where to start. Now you’ve got an answer.”

There are definitely benefits to journalists immersing themselves in the online market – indeed, some believe it’s the only way forward. And Six Apart do promise the writer advertising revenue, so some money will be made. It remains to be seen how much.

Either way, The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss has definitely made up her mind: “Six Apart have come up with a novel way of exploiting journalists who might be facing recession induced redundancy: start blogging!” she writes. “If you apply, you’ll get a free TypePad account, membership of the Six Apart ads programme which shares revenue on ads on your blog, promotion on Blogs.com and a bunch of vague benefits about being able to manage comments from your phone and such like. I’m sure that will be very helpful in trying to feed your family.”

As they say, necessity breeds innovations, or rather, desperation breeds opportunism and bullshit.

Posted by Ruth Stokes in Creative Economy | November 20, 2008 12:59PM |