TypePad Journalist Bailout Program

Sacked journalists take to blogging? I was on Twitter’s party line for the Monday night (USA time) chats on journalism #journchat, and was a little taken aback to see the number of journalists tweeting about losing their job, papers closing, and so on. Then this one caught my eye.

@Machione: @amyvernon I’m a journalist whose paper closed. Accepted in Typepad’s Journalist Bailout Program. http://starkreporter.typepad.com #journchat

Being incurably nosy, I went off to look at Typepad’s “Journalist bailout program“. Now called Typepad for Journalists. Typepad is a blogging platform, white label (hosted) service, extremely wellknown and used by all sorts of famous people and sites.

TypePad for Journalists is a new program from Six Apart, the company whose Movable Type and TypePad publishing platforms, Six Apart Media advertising, and Six Apart Services team help power many of the most successful media companies in the world.

We want to help independent journalists become more entrepreneurial, and to give you the tools you need to succeed with your own blog.

Originally launched as an informal “bailout program” for journalists who are out of work, or who just wanted to take control over their careers, we’ve been amazed to see that this idea has inspired responses from thousands of journalists around the world. So we’ve renamed the program and expanded its focus based on your response.

I checked them out, they provide three services:

What’s the Deal?

Membership in the TypePad for Journalists program includes a few key benefits:

• The best tools for the job: TypePad Pro is the same industrial-strength blogging platform that powers many of the biggest media sites in the world. TypePad offers all the latest technical features with a simple interface that lets you focus on your ideas, not technology. All backed by real humans to answer your questions.
• Powerful advertising services: Six Apart Media offers an experienced and creative advertising program that already helps hundreds of publishers earn more than they would with simple text ads like Google AdWords.
• Promotion and Education: We’ll promote your site on Blogs.com, our directory of the best of blogs, and connect you to experts from Six Apart and from across the web who can teach you how to build your audience and make your new blog a success.

Bronwen Clune, ex journalist and now Citizen Editor and CEO of citizen newspaper, Norg said something that we needed something similar when Fairfax fired those first 500 odd staff. And she got shot down in flames for it. Makes you think, no?

If you are interested in where I think how there can be a crossover from journalism to hybrid citizen journalism, this is a workshop I ran for 80 freelance journalists in Sydney.

Stuff in Red: telling journalists that blogging can align them with the biggest media sites, showing them that there is advertising program that other publishers use, and offering educational services for career improvement and building an audience is the way to sell social media services to traditional journalists facing unemployment, no?