I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a temporary position out of state via networking, but after signing a six-month lease, that job evaporated in only 10 weeks. Next job ran five months before layoffs were threatened, prompting me to find a position at a small weekly in the town I wanted to retire in but turned out to be nominally editorial but functionally advertising, leading to my first panic attack and resignation.
Owing to a lot of other shit happening, I wasn't in a position worth even putting on a resume for 14 months. On the other end of that was 19 months at the local paper where I'd landed, cut short because I decided a 50% raise to go into marketing was worth the ethical costs (and would return me to where I'd started in 2003). I only had to endure that for 10 months, when our three-year contract was terminated. I quickly found work at an audiobook publisher, but nine months into that, I walked out from a dressing down from my boss, on the production floor, for doing what I'd been told to do (and not in a malicious-compliance sort of way).
A couple months later, a SWAT team rousted my family from our hotel room Christmas Eve, and to my wife's surprise, before we got to the ground floor, I'd dialed the batphone at the paper. After being a source on A1 for the Christmas edition, I figured I had nothing to lose by emailing the editor. The old IT guy was gone, and they were looking for a part-time, temporary copyeditor ahead of the desk being shipped off to Texas, so I started the new year working across from the city ed from back in the day.
I did not follow my job at first, as it was a pay cut in a far more expensive city, but after nine months of fruitless searching, I got back in touch and took the job here, which I had three roles at over nearly five years.
So I'm seriously considering removing several of the intervening positions and stretching both stints to paper over both the gaps and the instability itself, as there's no one to call to verify when I worked there. Being midcareer, it's hard enough to get past software gatekeepers in the first place, but seven mostly nonconsecutive positions in as many years can't be helping my score.
The two main wrinkles I can foresee are a wholesale refactor of my LinkedIn could be a red flag, and the most basic of background reports would place me in two other states before remote journalism work was a thing.
I don't like the idea of lying on my resume, but what I'm doing now isn't working.
Are there other risks I'm not considering? I'd love some stability going forward, but I'm not going to expect any job to last long enough that this could stymie a promotion.
First off, you're NEVER unemployed. You're consulting / free lance writing. With your background that's 100% believable and no one ever checks on that. Even if they did... did you do ANYTHING related to your skillset to help ANYONE (friends, family)? They'll probably agree to be a former client a potential employer could talk to. Did you do any volunteer work? Get involved in any non-profits? Get references from folks there.
2nd, if you're working part time somewhere off and on... you're working part time there the whole time while also working on your consulting business. That's why you were part time. If you were promoted, you note the dates of your promotions.
My resume says "Consultant at Coyote, ltd" for an 8 year period. Overlapping with that period is 1 year as IT director at a now defunct startup, 1 year as a project manager at a cybersecurity firm and 1.5 years as Cyberoperations Director at a spaceflight electronics startup. The CEO at the space company tried to get me to sign a no moonlighting clause and I flat out told him no. He was a bit of a dick about it (and whined about "this is standard stuff!") I held my ground and they didn't fire me. Fuck that noise.
3rd, Don't hesitate to clean up your LinkedIn. I HATE LinkedIn. It's intrusive and invasive, it serves corporations while exposing humans to a hypercompetitive stressfest of bullshit career posts to "like" and "engage with" and it exposes your past dirty laundry (or job history at dumpster fire positions) to potential future employers in a way that feels icky. I fucking hate that company, and wish death upon it.
That being said, you DO need to use it and game the shit out of it. Every hiring manager EVER will check your LinkedIn profile to see if it mostly matches your resume. But they won't spend time to dig too deep into it unless your REALLY STRONGLY being considered for a senior position. They'll just check that it exists and you have connections with people from former positions. Which if you're NOT connected to former co-workers... get on that.
Add a "Freelance Writing / Editing Consultant" (or whatever) position to LinkedIn covering the years from your first to your final unemployment period.
4rth, You're applying in a field where a gajillion liberal arts / humanities grads are competing over jobs that are being replaced by generative AI at companies that are being looted by vulture capitalists and repurposed for propaganda by right wing billionaires. I'm SO sorry about that. It sucks.
Realistically, it's time to ask what ELSE your background qualifies you for...
Finally, your timeline makes me think you're in your 40s or 50s maybe? These are your PEAK earning years. Don't waste them.
I did not mean to guilt trip anyone. Nor am I spinning some "personal responsibility" conservative Boomer shit. Everything that you say is absolutely true.
But the reality is that those are peak earnings decades and the fact that the economy is an utterly unjust dumpster fire and 100% of the fault for that lies at the feet of rich conservative old people and idiots who get conned into voting against their own best interests, doesn't make that not true... And also doesn't change that being old and broke is gonna suck balls.
That's just meant to be a motivator. It is for me, I wouldn't be doing as well as I am (which is not nearly as well as I want to be) without that exact motivator + the fact that I have a family that depends on me.
No. I am encouraging him to do everything he can to proactively make his life NOT suck later. Those aren't the same thing, but it sounds like you have an ax to grind. I get it, I have a similar ax but I have to wonder if this ax is really serving you or are you just impotently angry at a world that gives zero fucks?
I don't think your ax is with me. I empathize with your position, The last thing I want is to guilt anyone. And reality is not your, not my, and not OPs fault. We don't have to like reality, but we do have to deal with it. Now the reality is that we live in a system that will reward us for maximizing our peak earning years and punish us for not doing so. I want to be clear that I am not a fan of this system. Not even a little bit. But that doesn't change the system, and sticking your head in the sand and yelling at people that try to pull it out isn't helpful for anything.
Your premise is that using reality to encourage people to do the hard things that they need to do is a kind of violence?
I think I'm done with you.
Enjoy your axe. I hope it keeps you warm at night.
Regarding wage stagnation. I do not disagree. That however does not change the basics of managing ones carrier. OP is trying to work in a dying field. Really questionable if that is a good idea. We have family that are writers and they have had similar issues to OP. The way to get paid well is to either be a specialist preffereably in short supply, be management, own your own business, or be in a union. Working in a growing not a dying industry is important too.
I should have been more specific that when I left Gannett, I was done with corporate journalism. I'm not against the field as a whole, but the job insecurity is just mayo on the shit sandwich of selling entertainment as news. The thing is, finding jobs through negative filters really doesn't narrow things down.
On the plus side, I've never had any interest in writing what someone else wants me to write. It's hard to start off as a columnist and then get news assignments.
I have no great answers. My wife likes to say find the intersection of your skills and passion and the world's greatest needs. I prefer to also add and for which you can get paid for, preferably at least 2X median income if possible.
Of the writers I know one did freelance for awhile then wrote a book after getting out of news. The other ultimately switch to being a producer of radio content. Think both were difficult. I had another writer friend that did technical writing for a large company. Something in the medical R&D area. Another person I know did creative stuff in video production and gave it up to be an executive assistant.