Shop talk

Bill Mitchell at Poynter interviewed former Los Angeles Times reporter Scott Martelle about The Journalism Shop, a coop formed by former LAT writers and editors to help them find freelance assignments - in and out of journalism.

Martelle:

Veteran journalists need to realize that the environment in which we built our careers will not return, and we have to focus as individuals on finding roles in this quickly shifting, unscripted play. We have to realize that no institution -- or deep-pockets philanthropist -- is going to come along and save us. We need to get entrepreneurial if we want to stay in journalism, and if we want to be part of figuring out whatever the new journalism might be. That takes a lot of risky, hard work. Yes, there is indeed life after newspapers, though it's harder to get your phone calls returned. And there is a disturbingly large number of us out there.

The full interview is here. Martelle blogs here.