I received an extremely interesting press release from Suite101 last week: the company is reaching out to journalists who have recently been laid off and offering them an immediate job. While Suite101 does hire freelancers on a regular basis, they’re offering to jump anyone who has been laid off to the front of the line.

While I can’t imagine that most journalists will look at the offer as a full-time job, I think that it could provide a way to keep at least a little cash coming in while job hunting  a little freelancing to fill in the cracks.

To take advantage of the offer, writers must:

• Apply online at: http://www.suite101.com/freelance_writers?presspass
• Present two recent writing samples
• indicate at least three recent years of professional news writing experience
• Mention they are applying under the “Warm Press Pass” program

While I’m pretty confident that a lot of journalists will look immediately for online work, I’m not so sure how many will turn to freelancing. Online news media seems a little more resilient right now, but I imagine that many of the journalists in question had a reason for not going freelance in the first place. What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Freelance Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.