“Journalist Bailout” Offers Help to Laid Off Writers

With so many journalists finding themselves out of jobs these days, the folks behind Movable Type/TypePad are offering a little something to try to help ease the blow.

Six Apart, the Movable Type/Typepad parent company, has announced a “Journalist Bailout Program” for recovering journalists or bloggers looking for a fresh start. Its slogan: “Because your Tumblr and Tweets, while clever, will not pay the bills.”

The program offers laid off writers a free TypePad Pro blog account (the pay service typically used by professional blogs), along with a free enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program (in which the user keeps revenue from the display ads) and free promotions on Blogs.com. Six Apart will also provide advice on driving traffic and other online publishing-related concerns.

“While we can’t promise it’s going to replace having a full-time writing gig, it gets you up and running with your own site that you can start to benefit from,” the company says. “We’re offering a platform to publish your work and profit from it. A platform that gives you complete control, with no dependence on the whims of a publisher, and no interference from an outside editor.”

Six Apart is offering the package — which it says is a $150 annual value — free to any journalist. It does require you to submit a link to a recent publication with a valid newspaper, magazine, or broadcast journalism organization to qualify. The company says it’s already gotten a “flood of submissions” and is planning to leave the offer open only for a limited amount of time. No specific end date, though, is provided.

You can learn more about the program and how to sign up here.

Six Apart