Trouble Finding Work in Journalism? Try Newsletters

As anyone who’s read the news anytime recently knows, the marketplace for print journalism is taking its most severe beating in decades. Newspapers from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the Chicago Tribune to even the vaunted New York Times are hitting perhaps their hardest economic slumps ever, and it’s resulting in layoffs at papers and magazines across the country.

One segment for print journalism, however, is enjoying unexpectedly flush times: trade publications and industry newsletters. As this story on NPR’s evening drivetime “Marketplace” show reports, journalists who formerly would have spent their days chasing stories for general interest newspapers are now covering stories in much greater depth and detail, though for far smaller audiences than the papers they once worked for.

This story (which you can listen to on NPR’s Marketplace website here) focuses on the industry for newsletters in Washington, D.C., but writers and editors across the country should take note from its findings — there are jobs to be had that allow you to write and report the news; you just need to think more “outside the box” about where you want to work.

You can listen to the whole story and read a transcript at NPR Marketplace.