The splash screen for “Can I Hire a PMN’er,” which was launched this week as news of layoffs at Philly papers broke.
In the hours after Philadelphia Media Network announced a round of punishing layoffs at Philly.com, the mood in the newsroom was grim. More than half of the journalists were notified on Wednesday that they wouldn’t have a job at the website in a month’s time, a fate they would share with dozens of their colleagues from other newsrooms throughout the company.
“It was doom and gloom for a couple of hours,” said Brian McCrone, a news editor at Philly.com.
McCrone, one of a handful of journalists Philly.com who will keep their jobs, decided to do something about the cuts. Before the day was out, he’d joined an effort to help find his colleagues jobs by their last day in early December. Within four hours, he says, the mood had changed, and volunteers in the newsroom were compiling job opportunities at outlets throughout the area.
The result of their effort is “Can I still hire a former PMN’er,” a website devoted to finding a job for all 46 journalists who’ve been pink-slipped. Since its launch on Wednesday, the site’s creators have amassed a list of jobs 34 pages long with opportunities in cities throughout the country. The effort is beginning to spread to The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, two other outlets in Philadelphia Media Network that have endured layoffs.
The website, which has not announced any placements yet, has attracted a following on social media, with journalists in Philadelphia and elsewhere importuning their colleagues to scoop up the laid-off journalists with the hashtag “#hireaphillyjourno.” It’s a reminder of the professional bonds holding together an industry that has been riven by layoffs in recent years as print revenue dwindles and newsrooms undergo inevitable belt-tightening.
“This news hit the entire Philadelphia journalism community really hard,” said Davis Shaver, the digital products and solutions lead at Philadelphia Media Network. “But it’s been so reassuring to see the outpouring of support from our peers at outlets around the city and elsewhere in the country.”
Shaver, who helped launch the site, says staffers at Philadelphia Media Network were bracing for layoffs and wanted to do something to soften the blow. He is one of a few individuals at the company with access to an email inbox that has seen a deluge of job opportunities from well-wishers as news of the layoffs spread.
The website has its roots in a similar effort launched by staffers at Thunderdome, a now-defunct national newsroom started by Digital First Media. Before the company shuttered the initiative in 2014, staffers used their dwindling days in New York to find jobs for their colleagues. The digital career fair and its associated website, “Can I still hire a Thunderdomer,” helped place staffers in top-tier newsrooms before Thunderdome’s last day.
The effort in Philly has been helped along by two journalists who witnessed the closure of Thunderdome. Jim Brady and Chris Krewson, the founder and top editor at Billy Penn, were both affiliated with Digital First Media’s New York newsroom before it was shuttered in April 2014. Brady, the former editor in chief of Digital First Media, has helped spread the word on Twitter along with Krewson, who consulted for Thunderdome.
Krewson, who was formerly executive editor of online at The Philadelphia Inquirer, left the newsroom in 2010 out of concern for his family. Rather than stay and watch The Inquirer’s newsroom continue to shrink, the longtime Pennsylvanian departed for Hollywood, where he took a job editing Variety.com. He eventually became editor at the local news startup Billy Penn, which is one of a few news outlets that have cropped up in Philadelphia in recent years.
In the face of cutbacks at print stalwarts like The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, there are digital media jobs emerging at places like Billy Penn, PhillyVoice, The Philadelphia Citizen and Technical.ly Philly. Since the layoffs were announced, Krewson says he’s been getting an infusion of resumés from applicants seeking a job at Billy Penn.
“There is life after daily newspapers,” Krewson said. “I’ve been doing it for awhile now. The water’s fine.”
